


Xenophobia

by OtterlyAnonymous



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Corgi BB-8, F/M, Rating May Change, Rey Kenobi, Technobabble, slowish burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2018-11-09 18:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11110305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtterlyAnonymous/pseuds/OtterlyAnonymous
Summary: Forty years ago, humanity found out that it is not alone in the galaxy. Twenty years ago, the Wall was completed and Earth divided itself between “Those Who Left”, and “Those Who Stayed”. Rey is a young engineer with a knack for finding and fixing the problems that no one else can in the Wall system, until outside forces come to Earth bent on conquest.





	1. And the World Changed

On August 25th, 2012, the world changed forever.

_Voyager 1_ was confirmed as the first human spacecraft to exit the Sol system and enter interstellar space. For the first time, data from outside of any bounds that humanity could expect to reach for a long time, was had. What humanity learned was terrifying. It took ten years to find, but there was already a thriving network of alien races, cultures, societies, and economies, none of whom had acknowledged any life on Earth or in the Sol system in general until _Voyager 1_ wiped out one of the greatest starships ever built, the _Ju’niah_ , when the ship was dragged out of hyperspace on top of it, the tiny tin can of human hope and baubles taking out the ship’s thruster core along the way.

There were two approaches to this. One contingent of private investors from all over the world set about building, for want of a better word, an Ark. The _Starship Discovery_ launched ten years later, in 2032 with the mission objective of sending, primarily, selected rich people, politicians, and socialites out into the stars to try and make our lot in this bustling ecosystem beyond our star. After they reached Jupiter, they were never contacted again, nor did Earth receive any transmissions from them.

The other approach was the Wall. The Wall was the highest form of technology on Earth when it was built, finished first fifteen years after first contact, in 2037.

Most parts of the wall had three levels. Level one, the top-most web of laser nodes about the size of a coffee can that fired outward and sat at the top of the mesosphere like an artificial planetary epidermis. Level two was the control and targeting systems that supported level one, while serving as a secondary defense in the case of a level one breach. Level two pods were significantly larger than level one, about ten feet tall and four feet across, held in place by magnets and thin support lines. Level three was the bottom layer that functioned both as a debris control field and housed most of the communications feeds that used to be controlled by satellites. Most sections were monitored by diamond-shaped section control stations, with their crew quarters and openings along level two for passage between sections. The band of main control stations sat around the vertical middle of the planet. Main Stations were notable for their four levels, five if you counted the support structures and space elevators that ran up to them from the surface. Levels two and three functioned much like the rest of the system, but a the fourth layer was crew housing and giant warehouse-like storage bulkheads for dispensing materials to section controls. The top level, rather than primary laser nodes, housed missile defense points.

Humanity had basically replaced their atmosphere with a dome, become a terrarium of its own sealing. Nobody could remember anymore what an unshielded atmosphere looked like, what naturally filtered sunlight felt like. Few people had any concept of winter; the only places not artificially heated were above or below 60 degrees’ latitude, and some people chose to live there. It was still covered by the Wall, though.

 

Rey contemplated this last item, climbing through a cable shaft in Pod A-1-39, about 51 miles above the Arctic circle in the middle of January 2066. The skin of level two drones that she was working in stretched across the planet at the top of the mesosphere, and anyone who looked at Rey in her padded and insulated spacesuit would recognize immediately how much the job sucked.

Fumbling with the last pin to the new integrated chip, Rey lamented that it just _had_ to be her shift that burnt out three units’ timer ICs. De-soldering and soldering new chip mounts was required, after she pulled the appropriate boards from their housings. The task wasn’t entirely annoying on the ground, and not particularly bad over the deserts or the equator, where sunlight warmed even the Level 3 cleanup systems, but over the poles, the temperatures were _even_ colder, requiring _even_ thicker suits. The normally-clunky gloves were especially… inconvenient.

_Damn, what had Teedo_ done _to these things to scorch the_ chip mounts _?!_

With an awkward shuffle, Rey finally slipped all sixteen pins of the timer into its board mount, and started about putting the board back into place. Almost done.

Still, the Arctic jobs had their upsides. Rey had grown up in foster care in the Arizona desert, and as cold, lonely, and dreary as Arctic duty could be, it beat the hell out of Plutt’s house. And, in three months, she and her crewmates would rotate Arctic duty for the northern Pacific Ocean, allowing for weekly shore-leave in the islands.

The board clicked into place easily, all things considered, and Rey started on screwing the holding frame’s screws back into place.

Better than that creepy asshole Plutt’s house, indeed. Suppressing a shiver, she pulled the cover for the control unit back down, and Pod A-1-39 immediately had power kick back on. Rey heaved a sigh of relief, and pulled her gloves and helmet off. Shuffling through her toolbox, she found the com-link she was looking for.

“Control Alpha-One, Pod Alpha-one-dash-three-nine,” she called. It took a moment before the com crackled, and a friendly voice answered.

“This is Control. Go, Three-nine,” Finn answered, a slight laugh in his voice.

“I’m finished up here. Systems green, readouts are reaching normal operation parameters. I’m on my way back down.”

“What happened up there?”

“Chip voltage overload on the delta-five board, just like the other two.”

“Roger that, Rey. Climb safe, Peanut.”

“Acknowledged. Pod Three-nine out.”

As Rey reached the ladder to the transport dock, she pulled on her gloves and helmet. Before reaching to the ladder, she clipped the toolbox to her front, letting it hang freely from a carabiner in front of her. It was a ten foot drop between the top of the pod and the air lock that her suborbital plane was attached to, but that didn’t mean she relished the idea of forgoing the ladder. Not when a hard-enough jar, like her landing too hard, would knock the pod from alignment and into a fifty-mile free fall that wouldn’t end well.

Well, not fifty miles; there was a Level 3 station about a mile below her feet, shielded on all sides, that would melt Pod 39 and Rey with it into carbon for processing into other materials. She shuddered at the thought.

As she descended into the plane’s cockpit, Rey looked up. Black sky peaked just slightly through the web of laser nodes, Level 1 of the Wall. It was a mile above her head, the top of the mesosphere, and she couldn’t help but wonder: what lay beyond it?

Earth was generally so terrified of what was outside the Wall system, but anything that looked so beautiful as the edge of space couldn’t be all bad. Once upon a time, people went outside Earth. They walked on the Moon and they plotted exploring the stars. Rumor had it that there were even some mining colonies in the asteroid belts that provided materials to build the Wall, but they were all called back when it was complete. Rey understood the fear and the danger, but it didn’t stop her from dreaming of somewhere, anywhere, that wasn’t exactly where she was.

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. It was time to get her head into lower clouds.

The plane shuddered as it drew the docking clamp back from Pod A-1-39, and Rey cleared the pod, tipping the nose of the sleek vehicle downward to begin her descent.

“Control Station Alpha-One, this is Kenobi transport departing Pod Alpha-One-Dash-Three-Nine,” she called. Finn and Poe knew she was coming; she’d just called them not ten minutes ago, but the safety handbook called for departure notices as a precaution.

“Acknowledged, Kenobi transport.”

 

Safely on the lower deck of Section Station A-1, Rey shucked the EVA suit and pulled on her service jumpsuit, an olive drab canvas number that didn’t do jack all to keep her as warm as she’d like, and only slightly made up for it with the number and size of the pockets. She and her teammates had taken to wearing flannel pajama bottoms and hoodies or sweatshirts underneath them, as much to supplement heat retention as provide some semblance of style. Today, it was Finn’s worn-out Notre Dame hooded sweatshirt and light blue flannel pants with cupcakes printed on them.

True to her expectation, Poe and Finn were hardly hard at work in the control room on her return. Poe sat at the control desk, the most relaxed in his adherence to uniform code. He wore his jumpsuit mostly unzipped to show his Navy athletics hoodie and matching plaid pants. His feet, propped up on the desk, were covered by neon green socks with little Corgis on them, and they clashed horrendously with his hot pink bunny slippers. Finn was sitting next to Poe, the top of his jumpsuit tied around his waist to facilitate wearing two shirts and a leather jacket that had once been Poe’s. They were wrapped up in the proceedings on the screen before them.

“Is Tottenham still winning?” Rey asked, pulling up a chair of her own.

“The game ended. City won, three to two,” Poe replied, eyes remaining glued to the television, where Rey vaguely recognized the bright red and white hockey sweaters of the team zipping about against the other team wearing white away jerseys decorated with blue.

“Damn.”

“It was bullshit too,” Finn said, passing the bowl of popcorn toward Rey. “Last second goal that should’ve been called offside, but what can you do?”

“How was the trip?” Poe asked, mouth full of potato chip.

“Awful. I don’t know how, but whatever ‘adjustments’ Teedo did last shift fried power regulator boards in three pods on level two,” she proclaimed, using air quotes.

“Not all of them, thank God, but not any in a cluster. It was thirty-nine, sixty-four, and three-hundred-forty. Like, how do you even _do_ that?”

“It’s Teedo?” Finn suggested, taking a sip of his soda.

“Too right, I guess,” Rey concluded, and focused on the game just in time to see the away team score.

“Ooh! Right through the five-hole!” Poe shouted.

 

The next three hours passed, counting down from the start of their shift at noon to eight o’clock in the evening. Rey had already managed to put away hours two through five with her visit to Tier 2, which was good for a repair run, but the remaining time seemed to drag at a snail’s pace. Even hockey, followed by a three-person ping pong tournament, then fetch with BB-8 the Contraband Corgi, could be worn out in such slow, cold hours.

It was almost time to clock out, so Poe had his boots back on, the jumpsuit zipped up to his neck, and BB-8 tucked close to him and covered by the hoodie. Finn and Rey did their best to clean up the chips, popcorn, and other trash before the supervisor came in for shift change.

“I swear, Dameron,” the voice boomed from the door. “You need to start working out more. We’re gonna run out of jumpsuits that fit you if you don’t start adhering to PT standards.”

The supervisor, Maz Kanata, was in her mid-fifties and stood, perhaps, to five-foot-two on a good day. That didn’t stop her from being loud and intimidating if she wasn’t showing her underlying sweetness.

“Yes, ma’am,” Poe said with a smirk. BB-8 sneezed in the jacket.

“Bless you, Dameron,” Maz said with a skeptical eyebrow raised.

“Thank you, ma’am. All of this cold air is really bad for my asthma.”

“Dameron,” she said with an exasperated glare. “You don’t have asthma.”

The graveyard shift stepped into the room before Poe could say anything more, their mugs of coffee full to the brim, their eyes still hazy from sleep. One of the team members still had toast crumbs on her jumpsuit collar. Another hadn’t run a brush through his mussed hair; his coffee mug was already half gone.

The floor jolted underneath their feet and a loud crash echoed off the walls.

A chorus of curses erupted, though whether at the new development or the spilt coffee was indeterminable. Rey’s three buns whipped around as she tried to look out the windows and at the displays for the source of the disturbance.

The alarm lights started flashing, and klaxons blared. Another boom, this time closer, shook the floor more violently. Someone’s coffee mug fell from a desk. BB-8 started barking frantically.

“ _Alert! Alert! Control Sectors Alpha, Bravo, Charley, Papa, and Quebec are under attack! This is not a drill! Repeat! Extraterrestrial threat immediate! We are under attack! This is not a drill!_ ”


	2. The Sky is Falling

The overcomm sounded the announcement before blaring klaxons again. The lights and noise made Rey want to cover her ears, and BB-8 was wiggling and barking in Poe’s jumpsuit with renewed and surprising vigor.

“All hands to battle stations!” Maz shouted.

Rey, Finn, and Poe ran to the locker room with the morning crew and started pulling on EVA suits.

“Dameron, stash that dog in your bunk!” Maz yelled.

“Yes, ma’am!” he said, pulling away from his locker to scoop up BB-8, one boot on, one leg out of his jumpsuit, and ran down the hall.

Rey pulled Finn’s suit up and started on her own flight boots and gloves. Finn already had his flight boots on, but he was waiting to help Poe. The morning crew, who had been preparing for bed by the looks, were already out the door, loading into transports to repair whatever might be broken in the onslaught. The graveyard crew would be in the control station, monitoring their levels and pointing the other six techs to areas where repairs were needed.

Poe returned in his thermal shirt and pajama pants, having shucked the other boot and his jumpsuit at some point. Rey waited nervously, fidgeting in her over-sized, padded gloves. It wasn’t until she was sitting in her plane waiting for deployment instructions that it occurred to Rey that there hadn’t been anything in at least five minutes. It was probably closer to fifteen minutes now. What were these aliens waiting for? A signed gold leaf invitation? Wasn’t bombardment counterintuitive then?

With Poe finally suited, Rey led the way out to the tarmac. It was dusk now, but Rey could see the fires choking in the distance, pods and nodes damaged and struggling to burn. Pulling herself into her transport jet, Rey fortified herself for a long night. One thing was for sure: nothing would be the same tomorrow.

 

 --

 

Kylo Ren stood on the bridge of the aptly named _Finalizer_ , watching the assault on Earth. The ship was stationed in orbit around Mars. A trio of torpedoes, aimed at the northernmost stations of the ridiculous biosphere, had been fired to test how the Wall system and the planet would react. As far as he could tell, there hadn’t been a reaction. No aircraft or spacecraft had been deployed. No lasers or missiles had been fired in retaliation. Then again, perhaps the _Finalizer_ was out of their sensor range.

From behind his mask, Kylo watched his bridge crew. All of them worked quietly and efficiently. He defied the planet they’d just bombed to provide half their number with half the skill. He smirked. Maybe they could show a quarter.

 

The minutes ticked past, and there was no retaliation from Earth. He noticed, however, that there were a few small craft dispatched to each of the attack sites. Repair crews. They were sending repair crews out less than thirty minutes after bombardment. Had they no shame?

“Move us in closer, prepare another volley,” Kylo ordered, the distortion of his mask echoing across the bridge.

“I don’t think it wise, Ren, to waste our cover,” a voice piped up from behind him.

“Stick to ground assault, Hux.”

“If you give them something to shoot at, they will shoot,” the ginger chided. If his hands hadn’t been, for all Kylo knew, glued to his back, he’d expect the other man to waggle a finger at him.

“They can shoot all they like. The Finalizer is an imperial ship of the line. It won’t be disabled by their primitive weapons.”

“Need I remind you, Captain, that these are the same humans that catastrophically sabotaged this ship’s predecessor, the Ju’niah, with no more than an ill-placed _metal_ _can_.”

“Sheer luck, Hux. Helmsman, ETA?”

“Ten minutes, sir.”

Kylo nodded passively. Ten minutes, and he’d be on the brink of victory.

 

It was his birthright, after all. His birth parents hailed from this dirtball. Those people, whose only gift to the universe was his birth had been born and lived most of their lives on this otherwise irrelevant and meaningless world. In taking retribution for himself, and the long-lost _Ju’niah_ , he was giving Dirt the most value it had ever had. With any luck, would ever have.

The banking princess that fell in love with a stowaway criminal on the most important Terran voyage ever plotted. What a cosmic joke. It was for the best that it was all erased. That’s what his sponsor, Chancellor Snoke, said and his wisdom and knowledge was not to be doubted. Chancellor Snoke had faith in Kylo Ren, and had put a tremendous display of it in trusting the _Finalizer_ to his command. Destroying Earth would only cement that trust to absolute certainty, and with that, Kylo could make his own name in the galaxy.

Seven minutes now.

 

\--

 

To say Rey found herself stressed as she crawled through the slag heap of a Pod (she thought A-1-345 was the number on the side, but it too was melted to be sure) would be akin to saying that the sky looks blue, fish swim, and chocolate is delicious unless you’re allergic or evil. She had a point in this train of thought; where did it go? Right, the thirteenth total board replacement. Her transport was equipped to print and solder replacement boards as the case called for it, along with other parts that could be mass-fabricated. The transport was not equipped to print an entire pod. Three guesses to her current struggle. To further complicate matters, her plane’s unit was proving that a circuit board printer was still a printer. Was it too early to hit the bargaining phase? The printer’s control panel lit up with a low flux alert, and Rey smacked the feeder, jarring it back into activity. Nope, still in the anger phase. It was a race against the clock, only magnets and a prayer holding Pod A-1-3[Melted] in the air. It had no power, no optics, and the targeting software would have to be installed anew, but for that to happen, Rey needed all hundred-sixty-three remaining replacement circuit boards soldered, wired, placed, and powered. To make matters even more complicated, Rey would be running out of components sooner than later.

 

In short, _fuck_.

 

“ _Hey, Peanut?_ ” sounded over her comm.

“Go, Finn,” she replied shortly, cursing the printer internally.

 “ _I have a board marked Charley-two-five. Where does it go?_ ”

“It’s a feeder from the power supply to the secondary optics. It goes in cabinet thirty-one, about five feet up to the left. If not that one, check thirty-two right behind it.”

“ _Found it! Thanks, Rey._ ”

She looked up from the cockpit, through the airlock toward where the main lens was hanging precariously when she saw it.

The ship that swung into Earth orbit next to the Moon was almost unimaginably large. Its metal panels were painted a slate gray that made it seem even larger as it contrasted with the blackness of the vacuum around it. Rey’s heart leapt into her throat, her eyes shot wide. This was the enemy, a few hundred thousand miles away from her face, as opposed to a few hundred thousand light years.

“Well, our attackers have seen fit to survey their handiwork at last,” she called over comms.

“ _Expect an evac order soon,_ ” Poe called back. Finn’s comm chirped, an agreement from the Mech-E whose elbows were probably still stuck in the electrical cabinet.

Rey’s printer chimed, the new board complete. Checking its lines and soldering, she nodded and punched in the serial number for the next board, and climbed up into the melted pod. The ship that made this mess may be in orbit, but Rey still had a job to do.

 

\--

 

Victory was not as assured as Kylo had thought. Also, Earth engineers and tacticians were bastards, all of them.

As soon as the _Finalizer_ had entered the planet’s orbit, the lasers on the top layer of the biosphere had started firing. One or two points of contact weren’t terrible, but from the edge of orbit, he ran into an entire hemisphere’s worth of laser nodes. The ship was also under effect of the planet’s gravity, so making a quick escape was out of the question.

He was currently gripping the command chair of his ship, barking orders and trying not to choke on Hux’s cloud of smug. If the ground forces commander wasn’t coordinating maintenance work, he’d almost definitely have claimed moral and tactical superiority. Pfassker.

The _Finalizer_ had returned fire with two more bombardments. Larger sections over the middle of the planet were returning missiles as the great ship approached the planet’s moon. Kylo ordered the helmsman to move the ship into lunar synchronous orbit, hoping to mitigate damages. The saving grace in this battle had been that the ship’s thrusters and reactor cores were well-protected at the stern. The ship’s bow, however, had seen better days. It may not have been breached, but if the shields collapsed, they were kriffed. It was a nearer thing than Kylo could have foreseen.

Still, it was a wonder to Kylo that they hadn’t seen any fighter resistance. His ship had a full regiment of new TIE fighters, and he’d been hoping to test their functionality for Chancellor Snoke. Then again, with the state of his ship, perhaps it was for the best that they were avoiding fighter combat.

An explosion rocked the ship. Kylo’s head whipped around, checking viewports and camera feeds. He thought too soon. A squadron’s worth of what appeared to be bombers and fighter escorts had used their moon to slingshot around the back of the _Finalizer_. Their bombing run hadn’t done significant damage, unless you counted Kylo’s nerves. He scrambled the TIEs as the ventral cannons fired another volley toward the planet. He needed to end this sooner than later. His ship was already in bad shape, and having bombers to deal with would only increase risks. He hated that he should’ve stayed in Martian orbit, but if he could turn this poodoo into a victory, perhaps he could still retain some dignity.

That was when the thought occurred to him.

“Helm to alpha-three-five! Ahead quarter!” he barked, startling the helmsman who’d been white-knuckled at his station.

“What are you doing, Ren?” Hux questioned.

“We’re going to buzz those missile stations.”

“That’s suicide.”

“Not if we charge and fire the main gun at the center of the planet from low orbit before making our sweep. Lieutenant Mitaka, start the charging process.”

“That takes thirty minutes for a full charge, Ren.”

“Stop questioning me, Hux.”

“I will not! We should’ve held our previous position.”

Kylo swept a broad arm over the control panel in front of him, his elbow bashing against a view screen. He stepped around to face the other commander, his hand shooting forward to grab the front of Hux’s uniform jacket.

"Their defenses may be stronger than anticipated, but our weapons are still far superior. It won’t take more than five minutes to reach the proper altitude and orientation, and in that time, our main gun will have charged beyond anything they’ve ever seen.”

The logic must have made sense to Hux, because he shut up and his attention went back to his terminal. Kylo returned to his own station and checked over the battle’s progress.

 

\--

 

In the thirty minutes that had passed since the big alien ship had appeared in clear view, Rey had managed to replace half of the boards and reattach most of the structures in the pod. She’d stopped briefly to watch the fighters and bombers go up, but she didn’t have too much time to observe the light show that flashed threateningly around the Moon.

The shadow moving to block the little natural light over her hands as she fastened another board into place made her look up. The massive ship was moving in closer to Earth. Its shields seemed to be weakening under the onslaught from the bombers, missile stations, and laser nodes it was inviting with its proximity. As she watched, however, the ship fired off a massive burst of plasma that almost looked bright green. Rey was sure that the beam impacted over the center of the planet, off the coast of Africa, and she felt the tremor as it moved through the whole Wall. She heard Finn yelp into his comm, and Poe cussed a blue streak as the whole Wall seemed to do the wave. It didn’t take much to imagine whole stations and the section centers in that region being ripped from the sky or obliterated.

 

Rey barely heard the slight creaking above her and the sound of her own luck running out as the pod she was still trying to repair was shaken from its own fragile hold and she fell into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I want to say that I'm nearly speechless. In the span of 24 hours, I've received a great deal of support, and I'm simultaneously humbled, honored, stoked, and emboldened by it. I wasn't even sure if anybody would read this, so to come back and have a bunch of comments and kudos is beyond awesome. So, thank you.
> 
> I'm probably going to wait until Saturday at not-five-in-the-morning to post chapter three, mostly because I'd like to get on some semblance of a schedule.
> 
> Other than that, I'm friendly, I'm awkward, and I check my [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/otterlyanonymous) more than my email. Feel free to talk to me.


	3. Conquest

As soon as the main battery fired, time seemed to slow aboard the _Finalizer_. Kylo watched as the large missile defense section over the middle of the planet was almost vaporized, and turned his eyes eagerly to watch as the whole biosphere rippled, crashing and ripping itself apart. The diamond-shaped stations nearest the targeted tower fell out of the sky to the planet’s surface below. Not even the debris control field could catch all of it.

Almost as soon as it could be processed what had happened, the bombers and their fighter escorts turned tail to retreat. His TIE commander had wanted to follow them, but Kylo had ordered them not to pursue. The last thing he needed was to endanger TIEs with the enemy falling back. The laser turrets seemed to stop firing as well, at least the ones closest to them. No more missiles fired.

The battle was over, and the _Finalizer_ had won.

Kylo Ren had won, and now he needed to figure out what to do next.

 

\--

 

Gravity, Rey decided, was not a friend. Gravity sucked. Gravity was behind her being tossed so unceremoniously to the floor of the slag heap pod as it fell through the air. One of her air hoses on the suit had disconnected, so she could visually see which way was up, if it wasn’t obvious that up was also the one direction she couldn’t move in.

Easing herself to her stomach, Rey looked around to spot the airlock that her transport should be still connected to. She heaved momentary relief that the tube and her plane seemed to still be intact.

She started gasping for air as she heaved her body, and the EVA suit, toward the hatch, shifting heavily to stick her legs down first. She fell quickly and freely into the seat of the plane, and slammed the hatch shut and disconnected from the pod.

           

Normal disconnect procedure, the one Rey followed instinctively, had no problems with falling away from the pod and retroactively powering engines of transport vehicles. In fact, it was considered a favorable maneuver in the pressures of the mesosphere.

The pod crashing out of alignment in the wake of a major attack on the Wall half the world away is not normal.

Rey went to turn away from the pod before powering up, and the plane was jarred by a piece of debris hitting the back of the fuselage. Rey immediately lost the left engine, and her evening got worse. At least, that was the momentary observation she made as she watched the world spin horizontally counterclockwise around an imaginary point near the tail of her craft.

Flat spins were tricky. Hypothetically, they occurred when conflicting moments (forces at work, part of momentum) were interrupted by a decrease in velocity. Getting out of them was like untying a knot. Sort of. If you absolutely had to make an analogy.

Rey eased the controls to hard right, and then pushed forward to right-front quarter. Her left hand reached out to the throttle and knocked it upward. The spinning eased slightly.

Right then. Rey knocked all switches to power down, stuck the ailerons to their neutral, middle setting, and kicked the rudder hard to the right before powering back up and pulling out of the spin.

“Kenobi transport to Station Alpha-One, read?” she called breathily over the comm channel.

“ _Go, Kenobi transport_.”

“Pardon me, but what the actual fuck is going on? Do we have any confirmation?”

“ _Negative, Kenobi. Long-range channels between stations are out, no word from Main Tower Alpha_.”

“Ten-four. Any word from Dameron or Trooper?”

“ _Dameron checked in five minutes ago, on route to Station Alpha-Two for immediate repairs. Trooper is silent._ ”

Poor Finn. Hopefully he was okay.

“Right then. On route to station for refit, repairs, and refuel.”

“ _Roger, Kenobi. Station Alpha-One out._ ”

           

\--

 

It turned out that Earth’s communication network was more poorly constructed than previously thought. As such, it took half an hour and a courier on a high-atmosphere transport to convey Terran leadership’s official concession and entreaty for peaceful ceasefire and negotiation.

“See, Hux? Not even twenty-five percent power on the main battery, and they’re backing down,” Kylo gloated to the ginger behind him. The messenger in the corner flinched at every hard consonant from the modulated Aurebesh.

“Yes,” the Colonel replied snidely. “What a _victory_ for you, Ren. The Chancellor will be _so_ proud.”

Kylo narrowed his eyes and shifted away, not that Hux had the satisfaction of observing the expression. He pulled up damage reports, and started going through them. The shields were almost completely dismantled; not only would the generators take time to recharge, but the generators themselves would be difficult to repair. The power cores on the ship were also depleted from the battle, but that was easily fixed with enough time in orbit around the system’s star. There were breaches to five different bulkheads, including one of the troop barracks. No reported fatalities, but it would need to be repaired. Along with the bulkheads, the water and electrical systems in a radius around each breach had been broken in a variety of ways. Some of the communications arrays would have to be repaired and re-oriented; annoying, but not difficult. Light damage to some of the TIEs. The Chancellor would not be pleased, but they had served effectively in the few minutes that they had been deployed, which might counteract that disappointment.

Kylo wished he could rub his temples to assuage the mounting headache. The ship was understaffed for this. Most of the damage would require high-altitude or low-orbit extra-vehicular activity, and very few engineers trained for that were ever stationed on ships, even Imperial ships-of-the-line. Reluctantly, Kylo acknowledged that there was a solution. He’d seen it during the battle, even.

To support their ridiculous biosphere, the Terrans had trained highly effective EVA technicians. Even now, he could see parts of the system with transports docked, people working away to fix the damages. They would need supplemental training, not just updating them on the technology, but on Aurebesh and design standards. The measurement systems were close enough to fit tolerances, he wagered, but some of the design logic and practices would be lost on these primitive beings.

He’d add engineers and repair technicians to the list of tributes demanded.

 

\--

 

The second that Rey’s plane stopped in the hangar, she took her helmet off and sighed in deep relief. Part of her still wanted a nap, time with an oxygen mask, and possibly to vomit, but she was on the nearest thing to solid ground, and she immediately felt better.

Climbing out on shaky legs, she surveyed the damage to the plane, wincing as she looked at the empennage, with its busted left thruster and scuffed rudder. The cargo bay, a hatch that opened along the belly of the plane was slightly ajar, and for the first time, Rey was stricken with just _how close_ she’d just gotten to the kicking the bucket. She stood rooted to that spot for what seemed like a blink before she felt a tap on her shoulder. Rey turned and grabbed on to Finn, sweatier than she was in his suit.

“You okay, Peanut?” he asked softly. He had a cut above his eye and some scorching on his gloves, but looked okay. Rey nodded.

“Okay. I’m gonna go get patched up. We need to get back out there,” he said, and backed away toward the med bay. As he walked away, Rey started on breathing exercises to calm down.

Poe had landed on another station and was reportedly okay. Finn was there, and okay. She would be okay. In fact, the most okay thing to do would be to feed BB-8 because it was nearing midnight now, and the dog should’ve been fed hours ago. If she got doggy cuddles out of it, all the better.

“Hey there, Classified,” she greeted when she opened the door to Poe’s room. It wasn’t uncommon for her or Finn to stop in and feed the dog if Poe was out and about, so BB-8 greeted her with bouncing paws and a happy grin.

“I bet you thought everybody forgot about you. Let’s get you dinner, yeah?”

BB-8 barked and wound around her feet, nipping lightly at her heels as he herded her to the food dish in the corner of Poe’s room. BB-8 started in on the bowl almost as soon as the food was in it, and Rey stepped back to watch him. After gobbling most of it, BB-8 stopped and turned to Rey, who stuck a hand down for him to sniff. Satisfied, BB-8 stuck his head under it as a clear invitation for pats and head scratches. She found the good spot behind his right ear, and BB-8 was looking up at her with all the love and devotion that a happy dog can when the door slid open again.

Finn had a butterfly bandage over the cut on his forehead, and band-aids stuck lightly on his knuckles and finger tips. Despite that, he smiled at the scene and sat down on the floor next to Rey and BB-8.

“Swindled both of us, huh?” he greeted the dog, who had the decency to look guilty. “I fed him, too.”

“I couldn’t tell, with how he fell on it. Almost cleaned it before I sat down.”

“Geez,” Finn huffed. “We need to put him on a diet. Maz is right, if he gets much chubbier, Poe won’t be able to fit him in a jumpsuit.”

“Nah, Poe can just have you carry him. You’re way skinnier,” Rey said, poking him in the side. Finn spluttered.

“As if you’re one to talk! The only reason you’re out of the running is that Maz would definitely find out about him if you started carrying him around.”

“I think Maz has always known about him,” Rey commented wistfully.

“Probably. And after Poe put so much effort into hiding him, too,” Finn said with a small smile.

“You remember when we first met him? Insisted that he didn’t have a dog.”

“Ooh, what’s that barking sound, Poe?”

“Uh, it’s uh, classified. Yup,” Rey said, running the hand that wasn’t petting BB-8 through her hair and dropping her voice in an imitation of Poe. Finn laughed.

“Poe, how do you get so much dog hair on your clothes?”

“Laundry. That washer’s got a serious problem.”

“Why did you spam lowercase b’s like, eight times in that conference call chat last week?”

“That’s really specific. Uh, my hand slipped.”

“And all the dog food in that box your mom sent you last week?”

“Uh… classified,” Rey giggled, breaking character. BB-8 barked, and licked her face, which only served to make her laugh harder.

As the laughter died, Rey looked at Finn and the cut on his forehead.

“Everything is gonna change now, isn’t it?” she asked, the smile sliding from her face.

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

 

\--

 

Kylo had his office chair tipped back slightly as he read the official report submissions from the battle when Hux came in. The other man raised an eyebrow, whether at the lounging pose or the lack of helmet, Kylo didn’t care.

“Ren,” he greeted.

“Hux,” Kylo returned with a slight nod.

“The demands and concessions from the Terrans just came in.”

“And?”

“They mostly want us to kriff off.”

“And?”

“They’ll lend us materials and engineers if it will expedite that. They’re not keen to submit to any rule, but we suspected that initially. I’m not sure why you demanded monetary tribute, since their paper is worthless, but okay. They’re resisting that too, but they seem more inclined to give in to that.”

“Paper currency? Get it clarified that I meant the backing for their currency. Gold, or whatever they call it,” Kylo said, and Hux tapped something into the datapad, mumbling as his fingers moved. Kylo went back to reading a report, only to notice Hux still standing in front of his desk.

“The Chancellor wants a meeting tomorrow. Holocom, first thing,” Hux said placidly. Kylo growled, scowling.

“I thought this was a victory?” Hux sniped.

“It is. Barely. You and I both know that.”

“You were the one that wanted to go on this bug hunt,” Hux reminded him. Kylo fought the urge to openly glare at him.

“Kriff off.”

“Excellent. I’ll take that as relief of duty for the night. Be sure to review the list of suggested staff.”

Kylo watched as Hux swept out of the office. Pfassker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realized as I was working on this last night/early this morning that I messed up my timeline in the first chapter. In the outline, it was right, in the text, it was wrong. There was a major re-write before this was posted, and I didn't go through the introduction as thoroughly as I should have. I'm so sorry. I tweaked that, and re-wrote the description of how the Wall works. If I have done my job, all of the math works now. Fun fact, there are 1406 laser nodes and control pods.
> 
> This chapter was fun. I got to do a lot of research; how to get into a flat spin, Corgi videos, how to get out of a flat spin, more Corgis, what would most screw over the global economy. Fun stuff. Next chapter or the one after should be the first meeting between Rey and Kylo. It'll be interesting.
> 
> Thank you again, everybody, for reading, commenting, and kudoing. Oh God, I sound like an amateur YouTuber, but I can't say thank you enough, even if I don't reply. Mostly, I don't reply because I don't know what to say, or I don't want to say too much.


	4. Reconstruction

The next day’s dawn was welcome, even if Rey and the crew of Station A-1 couldn’t see it. Poe had rolled in around five in the morning, and disturbed the welcoming party where they fell asleep on the floor when he collapsed on top of them. That had started BB-8 barking, which startled Rey and Finn into reluctant wakefulness.

Checking comms, they found where Maz had been searching for them for the past three hours. Rey knew it was time to get back out there, and was relieved to see the rotation team that had been on leave in Iceland had returned with the reserve crews. Her transport had been repaired and restocked by the flight crew that was only flown in for training or emergencies. One of them waved to her as she approached it, and started pre-flight checks.

“Whoa, Kenobi,” the tech called, following behind her.

“Hi, Jonesy,” she greeted.

“You look like Hell. Go get cleaned up and get breakfast.”

“I just woke up from a four-hour nap.”

“And you need a cup of coffee and a fresh flight suit. Yours is breached.”

Jonesy had a point. The hose that had been pulled from its port on her air tank was dragging behind her like a strange tail. She sighed.

Finn was still in their common room’s kitchen when she came in. His nose was hanging dangerously close to his bowl of cereal, his eyes fighting to stay open. The door closing startled him, and he spluttered as his face fell forward.

“Hey, Peanut,” he greeted with a yawn as he wiped the milk from his face.

“Finn, we’ve had this conversation: stop falling asleep in the bowl. One day, Poe and I won’t be here to keep you from drowning in your breakfast.”

“Uh-huh, okay, Rey,” he said, rubbing his eyes and yawning again.

           

Rey managed to force down a cup of coffee and a protein bar before she went back and changed into her spare flight suit. Jonesy was waiting by the transport when she returned. Running an eye over her, Jonesy nodded, and stepped away.

“Don’t knock anymore pods down, Kenobi,” the tech chirped, lifting a fuel hose away from the craft. Rey glared as she climbed into the cockpit.

“Kenobi transport, initiating flight checks to clear Section Control Tower Alpha-one,” she radioed in, testing comms as she alternated stepping on the rudder pedals and flipping the ailerons.

“ _Control Alpha-one to Kenobi transport. Clear for take-off at leisure. Recommend course to section alpha-prime-three. Be advised, there may be structural integrity issues. They took a direct hit in the frame._ ”

“Kenobi transport, acknowledged,” Rey groaned. She could end up falling out of the sky again. Happy thoughts. Using the catapult to launch was a happy thought. Launch sequence was the best part about maintenance launches, with the way Rey was pushed into the chair, gravity and speed shoving her deeply into the chair, pulling her skin back and pushing on her chest.

She proceeded out to the section she was ordered to, and looked around for a pod to work on. Most of the ones closest to the northern-most frame were in bad shape. She picked one at random, and called in at A-3-1024.

 

\--

 

Kylo didn’t sleep.

Not that it was unusual. Even when he did, it was never as restful as he would have liked. He sat up, and rubbed at the back of his neck absently, and fought the reminder of his stress. It was four o’clock in the morning, local time. Standard time, it was closer to mid-afternoon. He sighed. The Chancellor would expect his holocom with Hux in three hours.

Kylo owed Snoke everything. He had been isolated and degraded as a boy, and Snoke had taken him and reformed him into the ideal Imperial. His origins would’ve otherwise left him destitute, but Snoke’s sponsorship had more than saved him, it had made him powerful. It had eliminated the weakness that Ben Solo had radiated. Snoke gave him his name.

 

The decision was made, and Kylo threw himself out of bed. He didn’t make an immediate path to his closet to dress for the day, but stood at the window and looked out at Earth’s moon. It was closer than most planetary satellites tended to be. He felt like he could just reach out and touch it, even from low orbit. Panic flared as he felt himself getting sentimental for his early childhood, memories of his mother’s voice telling him of early Terran astronauts playing games on the gray surface. Those memories were useless. Those memories had no place with Kylo Ren.

Searching for a distraction, he picked up the datapad from Hux with the negotiation summary from Earth. If they were going to follow mission parameters, their victory had to be absolute before Earth’s destruction.

The demands that Kylo and Hux had laid out for Earth’s negotiators had been basic: a portion of their currency totaling 10% of the global gross domestic product, materials and crew for repairs to the _Finalizer_ , and recognized control of planetary affairs ceded to Captain Kylo Ren. There was a clause for amendment, should there be a need to add to the list.

The Terran delegation had argued for about three hours before conceding the money, materials, and crew, but they had rejected control. Instead, they counter-offered to disable their biosphere to allow peaceful departure within 24 hours of repair completion. Kylo smirked. The negotiators had some nerve, he’d give them that. Still, relative to the mission’s goals, their disabling their defenses was appealing. It would make his job all too easy, especially if they couldn’t finish repairs with their staff fixing his ship. It was something to consider, and the longer he took through the day, the more it would make the dirtball below sweat.

There was also the staff to consider. Each of the diamond-shaped structures below regularly housed nine repair technicians, per the readout on the datapad, with three more on rotation to the surface in weekly intervals. In case of emergency, like a giant alien ship launching an orbital assault, a full-service flight crew and a twelve-person reserve crew was dispatched to every station. Twenty-seven people to each diamond shape, and there had to be close to three hundred stretching across the planet. Seven thousand names to consider. He wouldn’t need that many; there weren’t even a thousand people on his ship, unless you counted the Stormtroopers under Hux’s thumb. Still, the numbers reached a little over three thousand with a full combat regiment, and they hadn’t expected enough resistance to merit those numbers. There was only one battalion, but they were well-trained and had the best officers in the Imperial Army.

Kylo sighed, and watched below as the small drones were slowly built back up again. He quickly decided that he could probably strike off any reserve technicians and the flight crews. If they were on reserve, they were probably less-trained than those on constant rotation, and he didn’t have need of flight crews with the engineers already on-board. Three thousand names were much easier to consider.

How many did he even need anyway? Hux recommended ninety-six; apparently, they operated in groups of three, and most of the repairs would require groups about that size. The temptation was there to request a rounded hundred, but Kylo set the pettiness aside. Still, thirty-two teams, out of over seven hundred. Did they have any data to track performance?

 

\--

 

Rey was satisfied with her progress. The current pod wasn’t as bad as the one that had tumbled, but it was a wreck when she got to it. Three hours later, and she’d mostly patched it. There were still some hull pieces that were being fabricated, but most of the boards were completed and installed. She was at a point where she could sit down and read some of the reports that were now rolling in as she sipped at a bitter cup of instant coffee from a ration pack in the transport.

The initial reports had said that these invaders were here from the Greater Arkanisian Empire, the largest faction in relative proximity to the Sol system. It was estimated that they were the first faction that the _Starship Discovery_ would have met years ago, if it had made any arrival at all. They had asked for money and materials to make repairs, and the United Nations taskforce that had been cobbled together (relatively quickly, all told) was inclined to submit. Rey could only roll her eyes. There was no word yet on whether these aliens intended to occupy Earth or would make their demands and leave quickly, it seemed, but the gossip said they’d made some demands toward seizing control of the planet. Good luck with that.

Even with first contact and knowing there was more going on in the universe, Earth was still riddled with war, famine, and social inequality among its own people. Hell, terrorist cells in southern Siberia had instigated some shit with the Chinese just last week, and their fighters and bombers had been unable to respond to the battle because they’d been moved down for surface defense. The week before, reports out of South Africa suggested that some factions were trying to instate a reverse Apartheid. In the United States, it had become a fad to wear a strip of colored duct tape on one’s forehead, arms, and legs as a method of raising disease awareness and promote vaccinating because so many people were following another fad in _not_ vaccinating.

If this Kyle Ron guy wanted planetary control, he was welcome to try and sort the various clusterfucks and FUBARs out for himself. It might even be funny, depending on how good he thought himself at political whack-a-mole.

The metal printer that had been chugging away at a section of the hull for the pod chirped. Rey stood stiffly, stretching her back and arms. She’d been sitting too long, anyway. She queued up the next piece to start while she worked. Getting the section through the hatch and the airlock tube was a bit tricky, but she managed alright, even though she bonked one of the built-in cabinet slots into the side of the pod on her way up. She pulled the rivet gun from her toolbox, and got back to work.

 

Two hours later, and Rey had her pod completed. She moved to the next pods, an adjacent pair, which took another six hours together, their repairs just taking up time on her printers instead of calling on her skills. Calling the job good, Rey returned to base for a late lunch and updates.

“Rey?” Poe called when she entered the suite’s common area for the second time that day.

“Hi, Poe,” she answered. BB-8 yipped a greeting of his own.

“Have you heard what’s going on?” he asked with a worried edge in his voice.

“Other than the obvious?” she quipped as she stood at the counter of the kitchen starting work on a peanut butter sandwich.

“These bastards are requesting materials and crew for repairs,” he growled, scowling at the tablet in his hands.

“What?”

“Yeah. They don’t have the engineers for low-orbit repairs, so guess what?”

“No!” Rey shouted in disgust. The knife that had been spreading peanut butter clattered to the tabletop.

“Yes. And the UN is going for it.”

“Those motherfuckers! What happened to ‘Earth good! Wall good! Outside evil!’? Are they really just going to fold like a cheap lawn chair?”

“It’s the UN. If they’d shown spine, I’d have to be shocked.”

“For the heart attack?”

“Ruin my punchline, why don’t you?” Poe admonished with a sniff. Rey shot a smirk over her shoulder.

There was a short pause.

“Speaking of awful jokes, how are you? Heard stuff got real.”

“Oh, you know me,” Poe said with a broad smile as he waved the wrist in a brace. “On top of the world over here.”

“I’ve known you for close to two years now, and that joke just doesn’t get better.”

“But you love it though,” he said as she pulled a mini bag of apple slices from the crisper in the refrigerator.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s still in the top five methods of confirming your identity.”

“What are the others?”

“I’d probably feed you marshmallows,” she replied as she sat down with her plate.

“I’m allergic.”

“Yes, and you carry an epi-pen.”

“That’s just cruel.”

“And unusual.”

“In more ways than one,” Poe said with a wink. Rey groaned.

“I walked into that one.”

“Like a moth to a flame. What else?”

“I’d find some salsa songs and play them really loud from the kitchen when you’re sleeping. If you flip out and start searching for a pair of rubber gloves, you’re you.”

“You are evil, and you never should have met my mom.”

Rey cackled, and Poe reached over to shove her sandwich in her face.

 

\--

 

The meeting with Snoke had been, regrettably, delayed. Kylo had reported to the bridge promptly at 0700 to find that the Terran delegates were denying the backing to their currency, and that there was backlash to the demand for crews from the contractors running them.

Kylo, for his part, had already settled on a list of teams and alternates. He’d been tense as it was, guarding himself and preparing for what was sure to be an epic chewing from the Chancellor, only to find himself called into a separate meeting with about twenty slavering politicians from the planet below, each demanding a different concession with little to offer in return. Hux stood on the sidelines of course, smirking at Kylo’s obvious displeasure that anyone who cared to look would find even with the mask firmly in place. These moofs were too busy trying to carve their own pieces out of this deal to do see it, so it was a surprise for them when Kylo primly stood and walked out about fifteen minutes after the meeting with Snoke was to commence. Hux stood bemused, fighting a laugh, as the politicians sat back and looked at each other before scrabbling to follow Kylo out the door, by which time he’d disappeared down the hallway. A sudden crash from a utility room cowed them, and before too long, Kylo emerged once again, hands bleeding through the gloves with glass shards embedded in the knuckles and metal shavings clinging to his coat.

“Hear me, and hear me well, Hutt slime. I’m not here for your amusement. I’m not listening to you for your demands. I’m here to do as I see fit and as I have been ordered. The next one of you to make more sound that isn’t ‘yes, Captain’ or ‘yes, Sir’ is going right out the nearest airlock with no suit. Is that clear?” he growled, his modulated voice echoing down the hall, his form the very picture of anger and intimidation. The politicians, to their credit, nodded mutely as they pressed themselves as close as possible to the walls.

“Good. Now, Colonel Hux and I have a… more pressing engagement. You can wait here, and I suggest rethinking your approach to these talks while we’re away.”

 

Snoke was waiting still, twenty-three minutes after their original appointment time at 0830. His imposing, pale, scarred form sat on a dais that projected him larger than his true size, which forced Kylo and Hux to look up to meet his eyes.

“You’re late,” he croaked, and the words echoed through the cavern in the ship’s belly that served as Snoke’s meeting room.

“I take full responsibilities, Chancellor. The coalition of Terran negotiators—,” Hux began, somewhat to Kylo’s surprise.

“If I wanted to know, Colonel, I would have asked,” Snoke interrupted in what passed for a roar. He waited for a moment, considering his words.

“I read the preliminary reports of the battle. Captain, I am _not_ impressed.”

“I understand, Chancellor.”

“Do you? Do you, _really_? I’ve put a lot of stock into you, into _both_ of you. I’ll not have it squandered because of your imprudent zeal for destruction.”

There was a pause, and Kylo was unsure if he was meant to answer. Before he said anything, Snoke continued.

“The _only_ _reason_ you won the day was the _superiority_ of the firepower to what those _Terrans_ have on offer,” the imperious creature spat from his pedestal. “If not for such a _crutch_ , you would have _failed_.”

“Chancellor, this could give us an opening. They seem determined to compete more with each other than petition us for what they want. We can use their avarice to destroy them internally,” Kylo forced out over the sudden, sharp pain in the back of his neck that eventually crumpled him on the floor. Hux fell as well, likewise clutching for the implant that rested against his spine.

“And what interest do we have in their internal matters or their goods? None. That wretched planet is to be destroyed, and tangling with it will only lead to trouble,” Snoke replied.

“By the grace of your training, I’ll not be seduced,” Kylo replied.

“Nor I, Chancellor,” Hux added, fighting to level his voice.

“I do not _need_ your _reassurances_! I want _results_!” Snoke shouted, as he hit the implant controls again and he waited for them to still.

“You seem to have forgotten that just as I _stuck my neck out_ for you boys, _you_ owe _your_ necks to _me_. You’ll do well to _remember_ this lesson and prevent further failure,” he croaked, pulsing the implants at the end. Kylo and Hux crumbled once more under the pain, and neither noticed Snoke’s hologram fading out as the meeting ended.

Ten minutes after the last pixel had gone out, Kylo rolled over first.

“That could have been worse,” he admitted, pulling his helmet off.

“You and I have very different definitions of good, Ren,” Hux wheezed, sitting up and wiping the blood from his nose.

“I didn’t say good,” Kylo replied, pressing gently against his ears. They hadn’t bled this time. “I said ‘not worse’.”

“Forgive my ignorance to the difference. I’m going to find a dark room and some pain relievers, and I’m turning off my comm.”   

“I’m probably going to do the same. The XO is on-duty anyway. I’m not going back to the politicians. Not today.”

“Honestly, the whole planet can just kriff off,” Hux groaned. Kylo couldn’t agree more.

 

\--

           

Rey, Finn, and Poe were making dinner almost twenty-four hours after their last shift ended and everything started. Finn had repaired five pods, and was having problems staying awake. Poe had only managed three, but he’d rolled in late to the party and injured to boot. Rey had almost beaten their combined total at seven pods repaired, and none of them knew how she’d done it.

“Zen-mode genius over here, making us look bad, Finn,” Poe had said as he set the table.

“I told you before, I’m not _that_ good!” Rey protested, tossing a throw pillow from the safe zone on the sofa at Poe’s back. Finn mumbled incoherently as he stirred the pasta, and BB-8 nudged at his ankles to ensure his wakefulness.

“And then you turn around and do something amazing to tear your argument to shreds. Seven pods, Rey! Seven!” Poe said, throwing the pillow back. Rey ducked, and it sailed over to the door. That had just opened.

Maz did not look amused.

“Pack your bags, you three. You need to be in Spain bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“It’s an awful time for a vacation, but thanks, Maz,” Poe joked, walking over to pick up the pillow.

“It’s not a vacation. You’ve been pulled for this coalition that’s responding to the _Finalizer_ ’s war reparations.”

There were three very different reactions to the news, and Maz waved all of them silent.

“I didn’t pick you. Statistically, you’re the best team in the Arctic, which is one of the prime rotations because this job sucks. They want efficiency, precision, and speed, and frankly you three are the picture.”

The spoon dropped out of Finn’s hand and splashed into the pot of boiling pasta. Some of the water hit his hand, and he flailed as Rey and Poe turned to look at him.

“God, what a picture,” Maz muttered. “You need to be out there by oh-seven-hundred, so plan on getting a nap and leaving around oh-two-hundred. You’ll fly back to Main Tower Alpha, and then catch the train down to Main Tower Golf.”

“I thought the contractors were resisting,” Finn said with a questioning edge.

“The Arctic, Antarctic and parts of Asia and Africa are independent. That means less government oversight, which usually just means you lot are better trained and better paid. In this case, it also means that no government is particularly concerned with fighting demands on your behalf.”

“Thanks, UN!” Poe growled.

“Yeah, well, get packed, get rest, and get out. The quicker you get this done, the quicker you get home,” Maz said, before turning to leave.

“Oh, and Dameron? Take that dog with you. I’m tired of sweeping up dog hair, and I don’t want to feed it while you’re gone.”

Poe’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes glazed over.

“She knew all along?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to get this out earlier, but it's a little bit longer. I tried to make it even longer, but it didn't really fit the tone. As it is, the last section is pushing it. I have some time maybe during the week, so I may get to go ahead with chapters five and six this coming week. They're almost there! I promise! Stuff keeps getting in the way, because this has gotten complex, and there's politics that I didn't count on coming in, but at the same time, I'm excited about it.
> 
> Which, speaking of, how did I do with Snoke? I'm a little nervous that I may have laid it on a little thick, or not thick enough. It's kind of difficult to judge where that line is with so little screen time. I also tried out some time with Poe, and had some fun with that. "On top of the world" was just too good of a bad pun for a team working in the mesosphere over the Arctic to be passed up.
> 
> Thank you so much, everyone, for reading! If you have questions or any feedback, or just want to say hi, comments are great and I'm also on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/otterlyanonymous).


	5. Down the Rabbit Hole

Morning came, as could have been expected, early. Far _too early_ if Rey was asked, but she wasn’t, so she resigned to packing her essentials for this trip in a well-beaten, khaki-colored hiking pack. She’d received it as a gift from her grandfather before his passing years ago, and it had carried the physical embodiments of her life well, from the ill-fated school trip to Europe that it was intended for, through three foster homes, four years of college at Arizona State, and now regular assignment rotations on the Wall. It was best that she just considered this another assignment rotation; she’d be back in three months or less. Hopefully less, because she and her boys were due some pleasant summer sunshine in the Pacific.

Dream of the islands, Rey.

As the manila folder with their assignment details outlined, ET wasn’t thrilled about taking care packages (Maz had highlighted and underlined that bit), so Finn and Rey were doing their part to help Poe and BB-8. She wrapped her shirts, pants, few pairs of shorts, and socks around several brightly-colored cans of dog food. Finn had small packs of kibble and BB-8’s clean pee pads, and Poe had BB-8 in his carry-on. Consequently, he was wearing most of his wardrobe as they piled onto a supply transport. The large plane had been designed to emulate the C-130 Hercules planes that had served the US armed forces for years, especially through the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. It had four jet engines as opposed to the turboprops of the old war machines, and a delta wing instead of a straight wing.

The S-230, the plane’s official designation, carried the three back to the main control station, which rested along the prime meridian and connected to other stations to form a backbone for the Wall. They unloaded from the transport, which was due to load more materials for repair work, and walked down to the bottom-most layer of the station, where the trains ran constantly between stations, all around the world.

The train was supersonic and already carrying three other teams. They were almost caught when BB-8’s sensitive doggy ears started popping, as all of theirs did, and he started shuffling in Poe’s bag. The dog had the good sense to stop when Poe quickly shuffled the bag under the seat. No one seemed to notice, and if they did, they were blessedly quiet.

 

The train stopped at Main Control Golf, just to the north of the equator, and the damages to the structure were immediately visible when the teams, now numbering ten after several more stops, took to the hangar. Wreckage was visible for miles, and MC Hotel was entirely gone. Sectors and their control stations were hanging limply, if they were even there at all. In some places, there were telltale marks of actual scorched earth on the surface below. A shudder ran up Rey’s spin and she could feel gooseflesh break out across her arms. The Arctic, it was apparent, had gotten off easy.

If surveying the damages wasn’t intimidation enough, the crew transport that descended from the massive ship as Rey watched looked ominous, its bat-like wings folding neatly as it pulled into the hangar in front of the organized chaos of the assembled tributes. She was almost painfully aware of how high her heart had crawled into her throat, and as she looked around, the only consolation was that her fear was shared by almost every other soul on the deck.

BB-8 was shuffling again, and he didn’t stop as Poe tried to trap the bag between his knees. An ear popped out. Rey’s eyes shot wide, and Poe just managed to stuff it back in and silence the doggy whine when the bay doors on the shuttle opened.

The man that descended, and Rey was shocked to see someone so human-looking, was taller than average and incredibly pale. Perhaps some of the contrast could be attributed to the crisp, charcoal-colored uniform, from mid-collared neck to polished black boots. His face was handsome, even if he had it contorted into a sneer. His ginger hair was precisely swept into a modified comb over, not a hair out of place as he entered the relative humidity of the hangar. Eagle blue eyes swept over the assembly, and Rey was stricken with the urge to stand straighter.

If he wasn’t enough of a presence, the next figure down the ramp certainly was. It was difficult to determine the race of the armored figure, never mind gender, but it stood out from the others in white armor with flashy chrome plating and a silk-like cape.

The man seemed to take the measure of each of the engineers and technicians in front of him, and as he progressed, his face seemed to grow more impassive aside from the sneer, which Rey felt had a strong chance of being permanently fixed on his face. It was almost awkwardly quiet on the hangar deck, as even those not slated to board the alien ship were halted and paying close attention.

“You all, surely, know why you are here,” the man said at last. It was all Rey could do to clamp a hysterical laugh at the startlingly British accent to his English.

“I am Colonel Armitage Hux, commanding officer of the troop garrison aboard the Arkanisian Imperial ship of the line, Finalizer. I have the duty of welcoming you to the ship, but before you board, it is also my duty to lay down the laws as they exist.

“Firstly, there are designated waking, meal, and sleeping times that are expected to be observed during your stay. Secondly, all information is proprietary in nature. Your governments assure me that you are all familiar with such procedures for your own system. The same rules apply, but we are not as… forgiving,” he said smoothly, sharp eyes continuing to sweep over the crowd.

“Thirdly, this is your chance to back out. You will be substituted if you choose to do so. By stepping aboard this transport, you agree to follow all laws, regulations, and expectations of the Greater Arkanisian Empire. Failure in any respect may result in any number of,” he paused, and seemed to consider his words. “Cruel and unusual means of punishment that violate several Terran policies on the matter, up to and including death. Your United Nations has been very keen that I tell you that.

“You will be supplied with appropriately translated handbooks, and given two hours to review them before you will be asked to board,” Hux finished, gesturing to a pallet of printed packets. Each seemed to be about fifty pages long, front and back. Poe passed Rey a booklet, and as she began to read, she noticed a few people ignore them and climb aboard the ship. Others looked weary, picked up their bags, and walked away.

 

\--

 

Kylo was nursing a headache. His head had been aching unabated since his meeting with Hux and Snoke the day before, and nothing that the medical crew had given him had done much for it. Honestly, the side effects of the implant’s use were getting worse. He’d seen this happen before, and too many more unfortunate occurrences would form a very real aneurysm in his brain. If he didn’t already have one. From there, it was almost guaranteed that he had one last chance, and then Snoke would kill him.

He wasn’t so sure if that was a bad thing, really.

 

It didn’t do to think like that. If he was gone, then Hux would get his ship in addition to its garrison, and Kylo couldn’t stand for that. It wasn’t that he hated Hux. Quite to the contrary, Kylo probably understood Hux the best of anyone in the galaxy, and Hux likewise understood Kylo. They’d grown up in the same circles with similar priorities. Hux could even be acceptable company when he was quiet and cooperative. The problem was that he was never quiet, he rarely cooperated with Kylo’s plans, and for a while, there was something to be desired in his hygiene. As a junior officer, Hux had always seemed to be shedding hair, for lack of a better word, and something about it was unbearable to Kylo’s sinuses. He'd either gotten it under control, or it had become less noticeable since promotion.

Kylo was due to meet the new staff soon. He didn’t want to. Even on normal docked changeovers at Arkanisian ports, he avoided the task. Then he recalled that he was also due to meet with the Terran negotiation team again. Suddenly, addressing the incoming engineers and technicians seemed far more appealing. Appealing enough, in fact, to merit freshening up. It was best to lay down the law with an iron fist of intimidation.

Looking at the wall behind his desk, he considered his lightsaber. Snoke’s Captains, promoted by the Chancellor himself, were permitted to carry weapons custom-made from rare crystals and metals. Kylo’s usually stayed in his office, on display, since he hadn’t been in any close combat maneuvers. When he used it, it was in training drills. Most captains kept their weapons as show pieces, and the few that didn’t were veterans deployed to the front more frequently than the _Finalizer_ and her crew.

He’d once used it on a control panel to vent his frustration with a training simulation, shortly after the Chancellor had taken him underwing and installed the implant. Kylo had woken unceremoniously in the med bay two hours later with a now-familiar headache. That hadn’t stopped him throwing fits, mind. He’d just raged with his hands instead of the saber, as his bandaged knuckles from his display the day before reminded him whenever his hands flexed.

With one last consideration paid to his uniform, he clipped the saber to his belt, and swept from his office.

 

\--

 

Rey had always relatively enjoyed flying and exploring, especially when the two activities combined. So, as the chrome-plated officer, a type of quartermaster she thought, loaded her team onto the transport, the spine-tingling fear abated and a sense of excitement started its own fluttering in her stomach.

_She was going into space!_ Her grandfather had told her stories of the astronauts and robots that Earth used to send out to explore the solar system. The tales had captured her childhood imagination, and were part of her path toward becoming an engineer. She used to pretend to be Neil Armstrong bounce-stepping on the Moon, collecting cool rocks, and riding around in a moon buggy (she’d been crushed when she learned Apollo 11 didn’t have a lunar rover). It wasn’t until she was older that she realized how out-of-reach the stars were, not just to her, but to all of Earth. A small piece of her never gave up, though, since she’d gotten a job working about as close to space as anyone got anymore. And now here she was.

The pamphlet put a disturbing emphasis on perfection in almost every aspect of life, but _space_. This empire’s ideals were rather more utilitarian than she was used to, but _space_. Just being on the ship would change her life forever, and maybe not for the better, but _space_. She decided to go, but not before considering the points her mind made. As Finn and Poe huddled next to her to vote quietly on how they would proceed, she could tell they were having the same internal arguments. Any one of them could say no, and all three would turn back. They stuck together like that, and they would get through this. None of them chose to stay.

They boarded with little ceremony, and no one checked through their bags beyond a sweep with a wand-like detector. They obviously weren’t specifically looking for metal, or BB-8’s dog food would’ve been found. BB-8 himself was beginning to squirm again, but Poe managed to calm him by holding the bag in his lap in a way that the dog’s nose and part of his face could peek out for the ride.

As the transport pulled away from the planet, Rey considered that they were the first Earth-born humans to see their planet from this angle in over thirty years. Looking back on the marbled blue orb, she couldn’t help but find it a damn shame that fear ever made them stop.

 

\--

 

Kylo couldn’t help but hold his breath behind the mask as the transport unloaded. He knew objectively that these were other humans, and that he technically shared a planet of origin with them, but to see such a cross between similarity and difference between them and himself was strange. They were organized chaos incarnate, from the way they shuffled into a cluster around the raised platform he stood on, to their shapes, sizes, and skin tones, to their manner of dress within a uniform jumpsuit that ranged from sleeveless shirts with the jumpsuit arms tied around their waist to separate hooded jackets hanging out of the neck holes. They all carried different luggage, too. They _had_ luggage. It was so different from the Chancellor’s teachings and Arkanisian culture.

He eyed Hux, who seemed to have acclimated to the oddness on his flight. Captain Phasma, the quartermaster, seemed less impassive and more panicked. What was this going to do to maintenance of order on the ship? Suddenly the Chancellor’s warnings came back to Kylo’s mind, and he could almost feel the pain again. He fought the weakness in his knees by looking at each of them, one by one. It was quiet, Kylo soon realized, and taking stock of the situation, he realized he was expected to address them. Kriff.

“Welcome aboard,” he said. Good start. “I am Captain Kylo Ren, and this is the Finalizer. You’ve already been given the rundown of expectations and rules by Colonel Hux, so I won’t waste time restating what is now obvious. Captain Phasma will have your room assignments and your duty rosters. The sooner you complete these tasks, the sooner you may go home and the sooner we will be inclined to leave.”

Kylo almost flinched at his own lie, and he hoped it wasn’t obvious. He’d never been a good liar, hence the mask that he almost checked was in place. There wasn’t much more for him to say, so he stepped off the platform and started back toward the bridge. He didn’t need or want to waste pleasantries on these people anyway, he was destroying their planet as soon as they’d finished working on his ship.

Cutting past the crowd on his way to the elevator, he sneezed.

 

\--

 

Rey felt like a kid again, watching the small transport’s path all around the _Finalizer_. When it finally pulled into a large hangar on the side of the ship, she was amazed by the lack of doors or air locks. Even in the mesosphere, there was need for air locks on Earth. To be so close to open space was fascinating.

As she stepped off the ship, she was pointed discreetly to a small stage nearby. Looking where the white-clad soldiers were pointing, she was finally given pause. The creature on the stage was over six feet tall with a broad, muscular build that was obvious even through his clothes. If that wasn’t off-setting enough, the helmet it wore certainly was, connecting to the high collar of his uniform. It seemed to stare at the crowd, but it was difficult to tell since she couldn’t see its eyes. Rey wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting when it began to speak, but the distorted, deep, booming voice wasn’t it.

“Welcome aboard,” he said. “I am Captain Kylo Ren, and this is the Finalizer.”

The floor vibrated under foot, and realistically, Rey knew it was because of the powerful engines required by a ship this size, and they were standing only a few decks above them. There was the illusion, however, that Captain Ren’s voice was a contributing factor, and Rey felt fear creeping back up her spine, blanking her face and thoughts. This was the guy demanding control of Earth.

“Captain Phasma will have your room assignments and your duty rosters,” he gestured to the chrome soldier from the transport. “The sooner you complete these tasks, the sooner you may go home and the sooner we will be inclined to leave.”

He seemed to fight himself at that, and Rey wondered why, when he’d been fighting so hard with politicians for control. She wasn’t the only one that noticed. Poe seemed to shuffle his feet a bit, a nervous tick.

His bit done, Ren seemed to flee the stage, passing right past them as noise seemed to resume. The shuffling of steps and fabric, accompanied by conversation seemed to muffle the odd sound that Ren made as he passed Poe and Finn to her left on his way to the elevator. Poe’s bag started squirming again, and it reminded the trio that they ought to get BB-8 where he might stretch his little legs quickly.

Captain Phasma was tall, Rey realized as the three took a place in the line that had formed in front of the quartermaster. She too had an almost disturbingly familiar accent, but her manner was decidedly alien.

“Names?” she asked them with a clipped tone.

“Kenobi, Dameron, and Trooper.”

“Deck 3C, room 3134. You’ll be primarily on the EVA shifts, coming from a region that’s issued EVA suits instead of the hybrids the other teams use. You’ll be expected on activity tomorrow morning at oh-seven-hundred sharp to realign the antennas. Study up,” she said, piling suits and manuals into Rey, Finn, and Poe’s arms.

“Yes, ma’am,” they replied. Phasma dismissed them, and it just started to sink in for Rey that she was on an alien spaceship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever have a chapter that flows all at once, and then just stops? Yeah. This one pulled that trick on me. I honestly thought I was going to be able to post this chapter on Wednesday, and here we are Monday. One day, I will keep my schedule. Today is not that day.
> 
> The plot is beginning to take shape on my end. I'm trying to lay some of the pieces out, and sometimes I feel like I'm not quite getting there. Looking forward, getting Rey on the ship was tiresome, and getting her to talk to Kylo may be in the same vein. They're living such different lives at this point that even I'm kind of relying on chance. On top of that, I'm working on another reason for him to avoid her.
> 
> Come say hi to me on [Tumblr.](https://otterlyanonymous.tumblr.com/)


	6. The First Day

Some say that if something happens three times, it’s a tradition. In that case, lousy, interrupted sleep was officially tradition for Rey as the first day on the _Finalizer_ began. She, like Poe and Finn, had fallen asleep in her bunk with her face pressed to the open manual for the radar array that they were supposed to be repairing, with BB-8 draped over her feet belly and paws up.

While the rulebook had been translated operably into English, the diagrams and notes in the manuals had not. Instead, they’d been issued separate tablet-like machines with English-to-Aurebesh dictionaries and learning software that really reminded Rey of her the ancient Hooked on Phonics books she’d found in her grandpa’s garage after he’d died. The manual tablets and dictionaries were at least done in a format that allowed editing, so as they’d gone through the diagrams and technical notes, they’d made translations in the margins. They’d settled in before noon, but the studying had kept them up until almost three in the morning. With only three hours of sleep, Rey stood up and stretched. BB-8’s paws twitched minutely and he snuffled as she put the coffee pot in the corner to brew and slipped into the attached bathroom to start her morning routine.

The quarters were small. It wasn’t surprising, since many of the decks of the ship had been damaged by the Wall. Rumor had it that even some of the officers were doubling up, and the troop barracks were almost a health hazard. It shouldn’t be surprising that Rey, Finn, and Poe were crammed into one room with one bathroom together, but the room was already smaller than Rey’s quarters on Sector Control A-1. Add to that the guys, BB-8, the accompanying stuff, and the windowless gray walls, and it was almost too tight of a fit.

It was nice to wake up to BB-8’s doggy cuddles, though, so there was that.

Rey took a quick shower and stood in her underwear for a long moment trying to figure out the teal under layer of the EVA suit that they’d all been issued in addition to new light gray jumpsuits. It was made of a material like neoprene, like most wetsuits on Earth, but had odd fasteners with the main opening up the right side. It didn’t feel practical, which surprised Rey, given how much everything else seemed to be judged on how much value it could be assigned.

As Rey stepped out, Poe rushed into the bathroom. Finn was sitting with a cup of coffee and a diagram tablet on his bunk in a matching suit, resting his feet on BB-8 and shuffling them up and down the dog’s back. Seeing Rey, he lowered the tablet.

“Ready to do this?” he asked her, watching as she sat across from him to put shoes on.

“No,” she said, tying the first artfully-patterned canvas sneaker.

“Me neither. It’d be nice to get another day to understand what’s going on, but supposedly we’ll have continuous contact with a supervisor,” Finn commented. Rey hummed in agreement, stamping her foot to get one of her canvas sneakers on properly.

The bathroom door slid open. Poe had one of the arms hanging from his chest, and the legs were rumpled so that the left leg stopped at his knee and the right hung at mid-shin instead of fitting closely down to the top of his feet.

“Okay, I know logically that it’s not supposed to fit like this…” he trailed. Rey snorted, and Finn stood to help him rearrange the suit. As soon as he was set and had his shoes on, the three left for the storage locker on the same deck with the hangar from the day before. They put on light gray EVA suits, not completely unlike the flight suits they’d been in not two days before. The suits were more streamlined, with smaller tanks and better air scrubbers, and smaller helmets with heads-up displays that kept track of data and objectives better than the wrist controls on the Earth suits. Stripes of reflective material ran up the seams of the arms and legs. It was like walking into a video game.

 

The magnets in their boots kept them clamped to the hull of the ship as they lugged the tool kits and the new dish parts out to the port side array. The voice in their ears that had introduced himself as Lieutenant Mitaka was soft and almost unsure, though whether it was due to the task at hand, his command of the English language, or something else, Rey couldn’t decide.

“ _You are almost to the first point. Look for the operator’s panel on the left_ ,” he instructed. Finn approached the panel, and started on opening it with the fancy sort of screwdriver they’d been loaned.

“Panel’s open,” Finn said, sticking the screws in a bag and setting them down with a magnetized clamp on top to hold them in place.

“ _Right. Next, enter the following credentials_ ,” Mitaka said, and read of a string of characters in Aurebesh. It took Finn two tries, but he got it.

The crew followed Mitaka’s instructions for close to four hours before they were instructed to come in for lunch. They felt like little progress had been made between the language barrier and general lack of preparation. For all that low Earth orbit was compared to the mesosphere, it had its differences. Zero gravity, for one, was a massive difference that made itself known when screws or other pieces would go floating off. For another, when the Wall was created, it was designed according to Earth’s international standards. While the Greater Arkanisian Empire had standardized, almost modular, designs for everything on the ship, the systems were very different from ISO. It gave everything the feeling of being in the wrong place, and adjusting felt a bit like fitting a round peg in a square hole where the corners weren’t clearly defined. To call it frustrating was an understatement.

That made lunch a welcome reprieve, even if shucking the EVA suits and changing under layers before venturing down three decks was tedious. It was difficult to find the cafeteria at first, given that there weren’t any signs other than room numbers and deck designations, and none of them were in English. When they finally did find it, their lunch time was half-gone. The staff in clinically white uniforms were the first non-human aliens that the trio had seen, and they were unimpressed by the gawking Terrans. The dishes they served were difficult to equate to anything from home, but tasted alright. Rey and Finn took delight in the rehydrated bread rolls that seemed to materialize magically from the tin. Then they tasted them, and found that even space had cafeteria food that tasted like cardboard. Worse yet, the bottoms were slightly soggy.

Checking the time, they scrambled back to the flight deck and into their suits to go back to work. Mitaka seemed annoyed, but also seemed to understand that they’d had difficulty finding their way. Either that, or he was non-confrontational enough to suppress any snide remarks. Another four hours passed, slightly better than the others, but progress promised to be very slow.

 

\--

 

Kylo sat on the bridge, watching the different teams as they worked. He was procrastinating, he knew, but he’d weathered the worst part of his day already, and he was only present on the bridge because it would be poor form to retire to his quarters for the rest of the day like he wished he could.

Besides, watching the various officers on the bridge was a decent window into the general morale and behavior of the crew at large. Some of the faces in one corner, he noticed, were new. Kylo struggled for a moment to place them, and then realized that they were other officers and crew that had been brought up to translate for the Terran staff as they learned Aurebesh.

The thought of the Terran engineers soured what little good mood Kylo had managed to piece together. He had been planning on an eight- to ten-week operation before attacking Earth, with the idea of being back in Arkanis space for proper repairs in twelve weeks. With the new estimates, completion of mission objectives in twelve weeks was optimistic. The revised estimates weren’t complete yet, but he guessed they would be more in the range of eighteen to twenty weeks. Contracting was never easy, and grappling with a structured system like that on the ship made it even more difficult.

He needed to complete his mission as quickly as possible to save as much face as he could with Snoke. When he’d left Arkanisian space, Kylo had been plotting a grand showing in the naval drill maneuvers planned in six months, in hopes that his crew might win him some favor and net more time on the war front. More time in the front against the Hosnian Republic meant more glory gained. With these setbacks, he’d be lucky to get to Arkanis with time to complete repairs. There wouldn’t be too much time to train the crew the way he wanted, and any new crew would be woefully unprepared for the trials. He’d be lucky to win any favor back with Snoke, with how this kerfuffle was developing.

He’d well and truly kriffed up in this. Why was Earth always holding him back? He wasn’t even native to the dustball, and yet everything in his life seemed to revolve around it. It was his parents’ world, not his. He had no world. Ben Solo was dead, and Kylo Ren still suffered for his existence.

Standing up from his seat on the bridge, he snarled under the mask.

The Terran delegation had rescinded their demands, for the most part. They were still debating among themselves on some things, he knew, but most of their demands had evaporated with his patience the day before. Good. This was already looking more like a loss. Conceding anything, only to destroy it would make matters worse. Ultimately, he would destroy Earth, and good riddance. Maybe afterward he could finally escape his heritage.

He had been groomed from his youth to be better than his origins, but the circumstances of his birth had always been a lead weight around his ankles. It was a true indication of talent, the Chancellor always said, that he had risen so high. He deserved it by merit, and with Earth gone, everyone would see that.

Maybe then he could find a place where he could really belong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is short. I'm still not completely happy with it, which is why it's short. I'm frustrated too, because I can't place exactly what's wrong with it. I wanted a lot more established in this chapter, but it just didn't work right.
> 
> Chapter 7 is probably 40% done. I'm happier with it, but I have no idea when it'll get posted. I've also got an interlude on the back burner, which is where most of my writing has been for the last week or two. It's a part of a set that I want to drop before things get really serious in the story, whenever that happens.
> 
> If you didn't notice, I tweaked the tags and description a bit. Tags are still weird, but I think I'm getting better with them.


	7. Your Disdain is Noted

Kylo truly hated Earth and its people.

One week with the Terran teams aboard the _Finalizer_ and Kylo had resorted to working without his mask. He physically couldn’t wear it. The only time he’d ever experienced such misery was while he’d been rooming with Hux as a junior officer, and being in Hux’s vicinity hadn’t bothered him in a long time, at least physically. His eyes were bloodshot and wouldn’t stop watering, and he could barely breathe from his nose. His head ached fiercely on top of it all. His only reprieves seemed to be in his office or personal quarters. He wasn’t one to let a case of sniffles stop him, but this was getting closer to his breaking point than he wanted to think about.

Despite his illness, he’d managed to get the official battle reports filed properly. The first communications array had been repaired mid-week, and while it meant long-range was still limited, it wasn’t restricted to only the emergency array.

The team that had pieced the first long range antennas together had been paired with Mitaka, and were supposedly one of the better teams on staff. It spoke poorly for Earth that one of their best teams took three days to repair what would take one of the orbital teams on Arkanis six hours, give or take depending on the actual extent of the damage. Still, the Lieutenant had babbled some praise. Kylo had tuned it out and growled his displeasure. He needed to get away from this kriffing planet. They needed to work better and faster.

What use were they otherwise?

 

\--

 

Rey slammed the last panel on the current antenna shut, and picked up the screwdriver. Mitaka said something in her comm about being gentle, but she was tired. Tired of the ship, tired of the crew who made sure to sneer at them in the halls, and above all, plainly tired. Since the _Finalizer_ had made itself known, she was lucky to sleep for four hours in a night, where she used to sleep a full six to eight. The coffee that they’d brought with them had run out, and the provided “caf” was painfully weak for how bitter it tasted. The language barrier was thinning slightly, as their Aurebesh improved and Mitaka’s English grew less strained, but it still caused the occasional hiccup. Problematically, Rey’s patience was thinning equally. Working in space was supposed to be fun. Now, as she wished she could wipe her sweaty hair out of her face, it was annoying.

“That’s all for now,” Mitaka said over the comm. “You’re dismissed for lunch. I’ll call you, but I don’t see any further tasks for today.”

Finn and Poe’s shoulders sagged with relief, and Rey felt hers do the same. It was their third antenna, meant for shorter range communications, but it was still a job completed, which meant the rest of the day was theirs. Rey could sleep, and she knew Finn and Poe were thinking along similar lines.

They managed to get to the hangar quickly, and changed into their jumpsuits even faster. After the first few days’ navigational troubles, the trio found a few shortcuts to the cafeteria and their room. The one that ran to the cafeteria was just outside the main hangar door on deck 4C. From there, it was two rights and a left to the large room that managed to be just as clinically clean and minimalist as the rest of the ship despite serving foods that all had some sort of sauces or crumbs.

The three sat down with their trays, and tucked in, Rey and Poe with gusto suggestive of past deprivation, Finn with manners so ingrained that he maintained them even after two years of three meals per day with Rey and Poe.

“Seriously, the dog is neater than you two. They’re not gonna snatch it out from under you, guys,” he chided. It was a ritual at this point. Finn made the effort to introduce table manners, Poe moved his elbows from the table and continued otherwise unaffected, and Rey didn’t seem to hear him at all.

Rey started on a bowl of soup, and paused.

“What?” Finn asked, and Poe slowed as well.

“This is chicken noodle soup,” she said, and the others immediately pulled their bowls closer.

“Holy shit. It is,” Poe confirmed after a large mouthful.

“Whoever made it didn’t water it down either. That’s a lot of salt,” Finn added, taking a sip of water from the glass in front of him.

They continued lunch, and Rey was almost finished with the main plate when Poe sat back smiling.

"I just had an idea. I think you’re gonna like this.”

 

\--

 

Kylo was usually the one of the first people to order lunch every day. This day was no different, and as he walked down to lunch, the stormtroopers cleared a path for him more slowly than usual. Most of them probably hadn’t realized what he looked like without his mask. He sneezed as quietly as he could, and stepped into the cafeteria.

There weren’t many people in the wide room yet, and the food was still fresh enough to be palatable. Today, he’d requested soup. They hadn’t budgeted rations for an extended mission, so food from the planet below was being brought in along with the other materials to supplement. Something labelled “Bird Grain Soup” was poured into a bowl and set on his tray. The smell was familiar, even if he couldn’t place it as he stared at the yellow broth with chunks of orange and green vegetables and ribbon-like grains.

 

As he sat down, he took the time to survey the general atmosphere of the room. Most of the crews were standard stormtroopers, off rotation for lunch between whatever rigors Hux deemed appropriate for the day. In one corner, a small group of senior engineering staff whispered softly, eyeing another table across the room from them.

The group under scrutiny were obviously Terran. From the unregulated appearances to the terrible manners that two seemed to share in, they were as not-Arkanisian as a human could get on the ship. The more he watched them, the more they began to irritate him.

Would he have been so barbaric if his parents had stayed here? Ruffled uniforms, untamed hair, and poor table manners. Kylo’s appetite waned. As he tried to look away, he realized that they were the only Terran crew in the whole room. What were they doing here so early then? Kylo looked back in time to see them cluster closer together suddenly. One of them was smiling, and gesturing broadly with his arms. The other two watched eagerly, hanging on every word, but not amused. Determined. They were up to something.

 

Curiosity piqued, Kylo stood and straightened his uniform. As he moved toward them, he noticed the table of staff engineers freeze, and turn back to their own plates. The Terran engineers made no such moves, no such indications that they’d even noticed him.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice rumbling in what he hoped was an intimidating tone.

“Lunch,” one of them, a man with curly dark hair and laugh lines etched under his eyes despite his youth.

“You’re causing a commotion. Please refrain from making so much noise in the future.”

“Absolutely,” the second man agreed. “I’ve tried to tell these two before—.”

Kylo waved a hand to cut him off. His eyes drilled into the other man’s as he spoke again.

“Why are you three down here so early? Lunch for the Terran staff usually doesn’t begin for another thirty minutes.”

“We finished our assignment early,” the first man said. “We were given leave by our supervising officer.”

“I see. And your uniforms? What’s the excuse there?”

“Pardon?” the second man said. Kylo sneered.

“You’re all violating dress code,” he replied calmly.

“In what way?”

“Your uniforms are not up to standards. They shouldn’t be wrinkled or dirty, as yours are.”

“What is your problem?” the third Terran shouted, slamming her utensils on the table as she rose. Kylo eyed her up and down, which seemed to offend her further.

“They’re wrinkled because the lockers are too small to hang them up, and any dirt on them is either from wearing them literally for ten minutes or from _your_ laundry service. Which is it?” she challenged, quirking an eyebrow. He really didn’t like her tone. Her teammates had grown quiet, and were watching them square off raptly.

“You can’t talk to me like that.”

“Oh really? I can’t? We’re contractors. Even in your Reich or whatever this is, we’re outside of your hierarchy,” she said, flicking her eyes to his rank patches. “That means that when you’re being an asshole, I can tell you that. In case you need clarification, you’re being an asshole.”

“You watch your mouth,” Kylo growled. His throat was beginning to tickle again, and his eyes were getting itchy. Didn’t she know who he is?

“Or what? You’ll report me to the captain?” she goaded, quirking an eyebrow. Apparently not.

“I might just,” he snapped.

“Do it then.”

“I will! Troopers!” he called. Two nearby Stormtroopers snapped to attention and jogged over to them.

“Take her to the brig. Insubordination. She can leave when I order it,” he ordered, watching to gauge her reaction.

“Yes, Captain Ren,” one said, moving to detain the girl, whose eyes had widened. Kylo couldn’t quite keep the smug satisfaction from his face.

           

\--

 

The brig on the _Finalizer_ was down six levels and inward, in a part of the ship that Rey hadn’t seen before. It was right next to the ship’s power core, which glowed fluorescent green through some protective windows that she and her escorts passed. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the level seemed to vibrate with the continuous thrum of the generators, and after forty-five minutes of the noise drumming against her skull over everything else, Rey was nursing a headache for the ages.

What a self-righteous bastard. Poe started outlining a plan to get food smuggled in for BB-8 and then Ren shows up incognito or something, and starts on them for wrinkled uniforms? Didn’t he have something better to do? Like, negotiating with the UN or something? Ugh. She didn’t recall seeing anything that suggested he looked so… normal under the mask. In fact, she’d kind of pictured him looking like some movie monster, like Frankenstein or Dracula. Maybe a Gremlin after midnight, even. Not, well, ill for one thing. Vaguely, objectively attractive for another.

Seriously, what was up with that? She’d seen the engineers and other staff on the ship, and they were at least well-groomed, if they didn’t look like fashion models or something. Did living in space just make people prettier? Was it something in the water on whatever planet they came from? Or did the empire actively select only the prettiest people to serve in their military?

And what was with the runny nose and watery eyes anyway? Were Earth people so low and disgusting that it made him physically ill just to stand near them? Rey silently wagered that such an “allergy” made him loads of fun in those diplomatic meetings.

 

The rest of the day passed quickly; Rey napped. Granted, it was could and the thrum of the engine made it difficult, but Rey slept for close to three hours before a sharp knock on the cell door woke her up.

“Dinner,” the white helmet announced before shoving one of the inflate-a-rolls and a small bottle of water through the door’s hatch. She accepted them with a small smile, and nibbled on the roll in one of the corners of the cell.

While she chewed, she imagined what Finn and Poe were doing. Probably having a dinner in with BB-8, bouncing the tennis ball against the bunk rails while the dog chased its haywire path through the small cabin. Rey smiled at the thought before her stomach churned with guilt. She could’ve been with them if she hadn’t run her mouth.

Ren deserved it, though.

 

\--

 

A day had passed since the incident in the cafeteria. Kylo’s allergies were still awful, and he had finally gotten himself inoculated with an all-purpose allergen reliever. He didn’t have as many physical symptoms, but he often felt nauseous and his head felt generally weird.

“Captain Ren,” a voice behind him called desperately. He turned in his chair on the bridge to look at Lieutenant Mitaka.

“What?” he asked the skittish junior officer.

“My team is reporting an absence today, and I’m told that it’s under your discretion, sir,” he said haltingly. He seemed to flinch at the end, and it was all Kylo could do to keep from rolling his eyes.

“What’s the name, Lieutenant?”

“Rey Kenobi, sir. Her team reports that she’s been placed under arrest for insubordination.”

“I see.”

“They say _you_ ordered it, sir.”

The girl. The girl was on Mitaka’s team. One of the teams on the satellites, the one making the most progress. Kylo sighed heavily.

“Can they function without her?” he asked.

“Terrans have, generally, preferred to work in their teams. None of them have been tested in broken groups, sir,” Mitaka answered.

“So the other two can go without for the next day or two, Lieutenant.”

“With respect, sir, they’re supposed to be starting work on one of the primary data transfer units today. It’s not a job that should be taken on understaffed, sir.”

Kylo glared at Mitaka. The young officer shifted in his boots slightly and gulped.

“Miss Kenobi insulted me and questioned a direct order. Would you have me let her off so easily?”

“Sir, I…” Mitaka paused, and contemplated his next words. “I place more value on the mission objectives’ completion than any insults, sir. While they can be… mouthy, this team does their job very effectively, sir, and they do it together.”

Kylo held Mitaka’s gaze for a moment, and to his surprise, the lieutenant managed to scrape together the spine to meet it evenly. All things considered, Mitaka was a good officer. If nothing else, he took his job seriously, and that ought to be rewarded.

“Permission granted, Lieutenant. Be warned, if Miss Kenobi or either of her teammates take one more step out of line, it’s on you as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send a trooper down to fetch her from the brig.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S HAPPENING! It only took, what, 15,000 words to get Kylo and Rey to have a conversation? Seven chapters, later, here we are.
> 
> Mitaka is also a dark horse favorite character. He's so unsure of himself, but he's good at what he does, and I just want the best for him. I think he could turn out to be pretty bad ass.
> 
> I've been pretty blocked lately, as those of you that follow me on Tumblr might've seen. One of the things that I've been writing to relieve that is "The Misadventures of BB-8", which I started as an interlude for this story, but it's taking on a life of its own in 200-500 word chunks. I'm debating posting it separately because it's about the length of a chapter already and I want to be at least twice as long, and it's not entirely critical to the plot of the story.
> 
> Oh, another cool thing: this story passed 1000 hits. First time I've ever had anything I've ever written get that much attention, and that's pretty neat. With 85 kudos, it's also the most positive attention I've gotten for something I've written, which is even more awesome. Thank you everybody for enjoying this story, even when I don't update for a week or two.


	8. Familiarity

Rey’s encounter with the esteemed Captain of the ship had left her pride wounded more than anything. Running into him four more times during the week, once a day on a ship as large as the Finalizer, was salt in the wound. The smug smirk he’d shoot her when their eyes met made it even worse.

This morning for instance. She, Finn, and Poe were in their undersuits walking down to the hangar. The caf was still pitifully weak and BB-8 had hogged her bunk last night, forcing her to the razor’s edge of the mattress. Rey was already done and it was barely day time. Who should come waltzing down the hall? Ren. Ren, with his stupid eye contact and smarmy smirk, like he knows he’s gotten under her skin in the worst possible way.

Poe and Finn were supportive of her, but they didn’t quite understand the point of harboring the grudge that she did. Rey didn’t understand how they let it go so easily.

“We’re focusing on our other operation,” Poe had said.

The “other operation”, also referred to “Operation: Feed the Dog”, was progressing slowly. Poe had reasoned, literally based on a bowl of soup, that the ship was importing goods from Earth. Rey and Finn weren’t sure of the mental gymnastics, but Poe was certain that he was on to something. He wanted to find an in with the cargo teams to start smuggling in dog food and maybe some other things too, like real coffee.

Problem 1: He didn’t know anyone that got anywhere near a cargo manifest.

Problem 2: He didn’t know how to find anyone that worked in the cargo bays.

 

Strangely enough, salvation on that front materialized the week after Rey’s detention.       

Poe had taken to walking around the ship, not necessarily snooping, just looking around in any area that he could pass through freely. He was thinking about how to make his plans work, when he ran into a familiar face. Or, so he told Rey and Finn as they passed around cups of caf in their room with a pair of guests.

Rose and Paige Tico had been Rey’s neighbors while they were all in training two years before. Rey had been disappointed when they hadn’t made it to Arctic rotation, so to see them aboard the Finalizer was a delight.

“So how is the Arctic?” Rose had asked.

“Cold,” Finn answered abruptly.

“Cold, yeah. But never boring. Stuff always breaks, so there’s always work to do,” Rey expanded.

“I bet. Even down around Uniform, it gets cold at times,” Rose agreed. Paige, ever the quiet one, nodded and schooled her face to take another sip of caf.

“You don’t need to make the effort for us. It’s bitter and awful, but it’s what we’ve got,” Poe said, offering a dish with what passed for packets of sugar. Paige picked two up.

“You guys haven’t been getting coffee or tea?” Rose asked. Paige elbowed Rose in the side.

“No,” Rey said slowly. “We only get what they let the troopers have.”

“Oh. We have a cousin in cargo.”

“What?” Finn asked.

“Yeah. Mom’s sister and her family left on Discovery when she was a teenager, and our cousin ended up enlisting with the Navy for full citizenship as an immigrant or something,” Rose explained. “He works down in the cargo bay. He said they got a bunch of coffee in the other day, so he let us have a couple big bags.”

“Lucky you,” Finn said.

“Could he make special orders?” Poe asked. Paige and Rose exchanged looks.

“What did you have in mind?” Paige asked softly. Poe stood from his leaning pose against the bathroom door, and pressed the button to open it. BB-8 came bounding out, excited to greet the visitors.

“Hi, BB!” Rose squealed. BB-8 licked her hands and wove between her legs. Paige reached down and scratched his ears.

“I’m surprised you managed to keep him, Poe,” Rose said, looking up as she ran a hand down the dog’s back. Poe threw his hands in the air.

“Does everyone know about my dog?”

 

\--

 

Kylo had a problem.

Well, Kylo had been neck deep in nothing but problems since the Finalizer had left Martian orbit. Problems were nothing new at this point, but this problem was particularly… troublesome.

Rey Kenobi. He wasn’t sure what to make of her. In a single breath, she’d been the most insulting and the most honest person he could recall meeting since… no, Hux didn’t count. Phasma? Probably. Since Phasma, and that introduction had been years ago. He’d barely been an officer then, still Ben Solo; gangly limbs, big ears, and spots of all kinds on his face. He shuddered and pushed that thought away quickly.

He couldn’t do anything to reign her in, and that irritated him the most. They needed every Rey Kenobi they could get their hands on, and even beyond the mission objective, her team had been recommended for impressment. Mitaka had already put in the request, and had stuck to it after her detention. It wasn’t something he’d expected of the youngest crewman on the bridge, who seemed to jump at his own shadow on most days. Drafting Terrans permanently? Mitaka? Preposterous, and yet it was true.

The whole thing made him itch.

He glared out the front window of the ship. He could hear Mitaka among the engineering supervisors in the background muttering directions to the team, who worked toward the nose of the ship’s exterior lighting. Most of the antennas were completed, including the large array that had decided Kenobi’s release. Lights flickered on suddenly, and from the corner of his eye, he could see Mitaka’s satisfied smirk.

“Very good,” the lieutenant said softly. “Come in for resupply and you can begin work on the next section.”

Out the window, the crew began shambling back toward the forward TIE hangar that they had deployed from.

“Lieutenant,” Kylo called.

“Sir,” Mitaka yelped as he jumped to his feet.

“What is on the schedule for the rest of the day?”

“Arctic squad Aurek-One is due to work on the bow lights until they’re all operational. The expected completion time is sometime before lunch tomorrow.”

“Are they on schedule?” he asked.

“They’re ahead of schedule, sir,” Mitaka answered with what looked like pride in his wide eyes.

“See that they stay that way, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” he answered, and turned back to his station.

 

\--

 

Three days passed. The trio finished replacing the lights on the bow of the ship. They were due to begin work on the bulkheads, but a loud crash had woken most of the ship that night. It turns out, one of the battery cores that powered the shield generators had been breached in the battle. The engineering team that had been clearing that room was spaced when the debris plugging the hole was moved.

As the most advanced Terran team, Poe opened the door at four o’clock that morning to Quartermaster Phasma. It was three hours until proper wake up call, but the Quartermaster was already in full armor, and had a stack of datapads.

“You’ll need these. You have until fifteen-hundred this afternoon to begin. I will be overseeing these repairs myself,” she said, dropping the stack into Poe’s arms. In his sleepy haze, he nearly dropped them. Sensing some distress, BB-8 uttered a low oof toward the door, and Rey was quick to silence him.

“Thank you, ma’am. Are we going to use the standard gear we’ve been given?” Poe asked, straightening.

“Yes. Don’t be late.”

With that, she disappeared back down the hallway. Poe set the datapads on the desk, and flopped heavily back to the mattress on the bottom of the bunk bed he shared with Finn. Shifting BB-8 lazily with one foot, he tugged the blanket up to his chin, and the three did their best to go back to sleep.

 

The next time they woke was at the proper time. Instead of making toast and caf before suiting up and heading for the hangar, they spread out the datapads and translation holobooks once more to decipher the schematics given. Poe ran down to the cafeteria to bring back breakfast, a haul of rehydrated scrambled eggs, undercooked bacon, and half-burnt home fries with three pints of what was obviously overdiluted Tang. It was awful, but the familiarity after three weeks of eating who-knows-what made it acceptable, much like the now-staple undiluted chicken noodle soup.

“It’s a little easier to read this time,” Finn observed.

“I would hope we’ve learned at least a little of the language,” Rey replied dryly. Poe, who had moved from his bed to the chair, hummed an agreement.

“It’s just a little weird to me is all. I took Spanish in all four years of high school and for two in college, and the most I can say is ‘ _¿Dónde está el baño?_ ’ and ‘ _Un taco, por favor_ ’,” Finn said, running a stylus up the side of his tablet. Poe slapped his foot with a pen where it hung from his bunk.

“That’s not true. I taught you how to get lettuce and beans on your tacos.”

“I forgot that part,” Finn said sheepishly.

“ _Ay, Dios mío._ ”

Rey stood and stretched.

“Speaking of food,” she started, glancing to the clock on the wall above the door. “It’s almost lunchtime. I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Poe fired, reaching out to poke at her stomach. She batted it away, scrunching her nose.

“I could eat,” Finn said, sitting up and locking the datapad.

 

\--

 

Kylo had retreated to his office after lunch. His sinuses were the clearest they had been in three weeks, and he didn’t want to show such a celebratory mood on the bridge. It was unprofessional.

Instead, he settled into his plush office chair with a cup of Terran caf and the latest diagnostic readouts. The breach of the battery cores was worrisome, and Phasma had assured him that it would be fixed in the next couple of days. She would oversee the team personally. He was satisfied with that development, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he would be dissatisfied if he perused the details of the operation.

Which is why he was scanning each page carefully, of course.

 

            _Team Assigned: Terran Arctic Team Aurek-One._

           

He sighed. Naturally. There was a knock on the door, and Hux strolled in.

“Ren. Sorry to interrupt, but the TIEs have recovered the bodies, and they’re setting up to perform the services on the flight deck this evening.”

“Thank you, Hux. How are the repairs progressing?”

“Quartermaster Phasma reports that the team is being prepped to go in this afternoon. They’re supposedly familiarizing themselves with the materials.”

“Why not one of the main crews?” he asked.

“Phasma wants to test this crew. They’re already up to be impressed, and she wants to see what their supervisor sees,” Hux replied, rolling his eyes. “I personally don’t put much stock in them, but if the Quartermaster is satisfied, I’ll be persuaded to file the

Kylo hummed.

"You disagree?”

“I think they’re inclined to be troublesome.”

“Right,” Hux said, smirk suddenly predatory. “That’s the girl who disrespected you in the mess hall.”

“Leave it, Hux.”

“You’ve been spotted off-course from your usual route three times this week. I should wonder why?” the ginger continued.

“Armitage,” Kylo warned.

“It’s just interesting,” Hux demurred. Kylo pinned him with a glare. Hux quirked an eyebrow, as if challenging Kylo to do something.

“I need to make my own preparations. Go… harass the troopers or something,” Kylo finally said, standing to shuffle around the desk toward the door. Hux stopped him.

“Careful, Ren, that your personal interests don’t interfere with the main objective,” the Colonel growled.

Kylo scoffed, but Hux was already out of the room before he could make any reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a shorter chapter, but the next chapter should be fun. Not that this one wasn't. I think this is the most I've written for Kylo in a while, but he's not really talkative. Next chapter, I'm debating whether to kick off with Operation: Feed the Dog, or with some of the battery core work.
> 
> Also, heads up! I'll mention it again in every chapter I manage to post before then, but I start classes on August 21st. Be advised: my posting schedule, as weird as it is right now, is going to go to absolute shit once I'm back in school.


	9. Operation Feed the Dog

14:45 rolled around, and the trio was standing in their EVA gear outside the makeshift airlock to the battery core room, Battery Core 3. The airlock was more of an airtight tent, with zip-up entries breaching walls of white plastoid.

“What, did they melt down some trooper helmets to make this thing?” Poe joked, flicking one wall with a padded finger and grinning at the thwacking noise that suggested it was tougher than Earth plastic.  
It was at that point that Phasma turned the corner down the hallway, marching smoothly toward them. She stopped primly in front of them, and even without seeing her face, there was a clear indication that she was inspecting their suits.

“Everything is in order. We’ll proceed early,” she said, and opened the first part of the airlock tent. Rey followed her, Finn clasping a hand on her shoulder, and Poe behind him. The gravity, unlike their other EVAs, was still intact, so after testing their footing through the second entry, they let go and went about inspecting the room.

“The hole is melted pretty good,” Finn observed, getting closer to the far wall. The lights were out, but the battery core still generated a green glow that bathed the room in an eerie light.

“This thing isn’t radioactive, is it?” Poe asked, pointing at the core in the middle of the room. Phasma snorted.

“It is not. The element powering the battery cores on this ship isn’t found on your planet. The closest comparison is nuclear power, but it is cleaner and more reliable than solar energy technology on your planet.”

“I was just curious,” Poe said. “It wasn’t in any of the schematics what was actually fueling the cores.”

Phasma turned to look at him like he’d grown a second head. Finn and Rey smiled privately as they continued their inspections. They already had preliminary reports, but doing their own survey was just as important.

“Trooper, Dameron, get started on preparing the breach for its patch. Kenobi, I understand that you’re an electrical engineer?” Phasma said. Rey nodded when prompted.

“Check the main core, and then the panels.”

Poe shuffled over to Finn with the toolbox, a handheld grinder, and attachable tinted visors. Rey surveyed the control panels against the right-side wall, and found the main control switch.

“Switching off the main power circuit in three, two, one,” she said, and flipped the switch. Slowly, the green glow faded, and their suits’ internal lighting and exterior flashlights kicked on.

“Starting main core checks,” she said, moving to the core itself and sliding open the maintenance panels.

 

\--

 

Five decks above, in his office, Kylo watched the lights dim slightly overhead. Phasma had commed him to tell him that they were starting repairs. The clock on his desk had just turned to 14:55. They started early. Something about that grated on Kylo, but he wasn’t quite sure what.

He turned back to the datapad on his desk, and worked a little longer on the report to the Chancellor on their progress.

News had rolled down to him the day before about new developments on the front lines. Hosnia was retreating temporarily. One of the veteran Admirals was in pursuit of their main fleet, and the war looked to be at a turning point. If things went well on that front, Earth would be a pointless detour, regardless of whether Kylo completed his mission or not. The news was, in many ways, unsettling.

What was the point? The Chancellor wasn’t usually one to waste resources. If this victory was this close to assured, why had the _Finalizer_ been sent this far away from everything? Surely a ship of the line, one of his most valuable weapons, would be better employed pushing the front.

Kylo steeled himself. The Chancellor was wise. The Chancellor knew what he was doing, and it wasn’t Kylo’s place to question that. Kriff’s sake, he had the nerve damage to show he should know better. The Chancellor had made Earth valuable, and Kylo’s job was to destroy it. He would go through with it. It was his destiny, and he would rise from the ashes. He might even get his own fleet. Then, he’d have a place for himself in the galaxy.

Kylo Ren would find where he belonged when Earth was gone.

 

\--

 

Rey was tracing a wire under the main console when there was a shout. She jumped, thumping the faceplate of her helmet before she slid back to sit up properly.

“What happened?” Phasma called. Finn was bounding back to the airlock.

“Melted my glove. It was an accident, I swear.”

“Go change suits, Trooper. Dameron, Kenobi, stop. We’ll have to log the setback,” Phasma said tersely. Poe cut off the grinder.

“What? Finn can go swap gloves from the other set in the hangar and be back in five minutes. We don’t all need to stop working.”

“That’s the protocol, Dameron,” Phasma rebutted. Poe looked to Rey, who nodded in agreement. Finn was already out the door, and had closed it behind him.

“We were working on separate tasks, Rey and I can proceed.”

“Most technicians would take the break,” Phasma said.

“This thing is important, isn’t it?” Rey piped up. Phasma shifted minutely.

“Yes,” she agreed at length.

“Then we can get back to work, and Finn can go change his gloves.”

Phasma seemed to nod to that. Privately, Rey wondered if this was some kind of test of work ethic. She rolled her eyes at the thought, crawling back under the panel in the center of the room.

The wire she was tracking before had come loose, though whether it was the decompression of the room earlier or her hitting her head that had caused it was difficult to tell. She soldered the connection, hoping that it would hold better in the future, and set about checking other components.

 

Work with Phasma was vaguely relaxing for the three hours after that. Aside from the occasional order or direction, she was quiet and proved a more calming presence than Mitaka’s nervous energy that seeped through the radio.

Finn and Poe finished the breach cleanup and had checked the mechanical systems for any damage. Rey had checked over all the consoles, and had rated them operational electrically. If they were called back, she’d probably help the others with the patch work on the walls.

Standing up, she leaned back slightly. Her back snapped and crackled, releasing tension. As the hall-side door of the airlock opened, she took the helmet off, and shook her hair out. The middle bun of the three had come mostly loose, stuck to the helmet for most of her time in her suit. Rey sighed deeply.

“Okay, Peanut?” Finn asked behind her. She offered a small smile.

“Just tired.”

“Me too. Dinner though,” he offered with his own smile.

“Excellent work today. Another team will pick up the exterior patch, but your accomplishments are noted,” Phasma said, tone lighter than it had been while they were working. They nodded, and stood a little straighter as the chrome quartermaster took her leave.

“She reminds me of my freshman math teacher,” Poe observed. “Strict. I mean, like, my cousin went to Catholic school and the nuns are more flexible. But she was also the most fair and honest person I’ve ever met.”

“She seems nice,” Finn agreed, and then blinked. “Since when do you have a cousin? I thought your mother was a single child.”

“Dad’s got like five brothers. We don’t talk about them ‘cause they’re all batshit crazy or rednecks. Except Uncle Joe,” Poe said as they began walking toward the hangar. “He’s both. I think he lives in Florida now.”

 

\--

 

Kylo was on his way to dinner. The morning had been the clearest he’d had in weeks, but his problems had returned with a vengeance after lunch. By dinner call, his allergies had finally died down enough that he could stand up straight and hear himself think. Despite the feral noises his stomach was making, he wasn’t sure about more than toast and a light soup.

He needed to figure out what this allergy was. It was a serious problem. Was it something about Hux? The Terrans? Was it something in the air? He’d already ordered the maintenance teams to clean the air filters and scrubbers more thoroughly and frequently. Maybe it was something wrong with the systems themselves. Maybe there was a biological contaminate. No, that didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t anyone else be having these problems?

Kylo shook his head and forced himself to pay a little more attention to his path. It was a good thing, because just as he turned the corner, he nearly walked over another person.

“Watch it!” the person squawked, and Kylo was somewhat aware of his boots on their toes. “That’s my foot!”

Kenobi was much shorter than him. Her hair was dark brown, but seemed to have ginger highlights in the harsh lights of the ship corridor. Her eyes, shot wide in surprise and annoyance, were hazel. He hadn’t noticed that, in their first encounter or in passing. She stepped back and he snapped back to reality. Kylo realized he’d been standing on her toes.

“Good evening, Cap’m,” the curly-haired one of her two teammates greeted. The other straightened formally, like the stormtroopers did.

“Fine weather we’re having, right? Come on, Rey,” the same man continued, reaching an arm up to pull Kenobi away. She was glaring at him. He kept his face neutral, mostly to keep the panic from the new observations from his face.

“Captain,” the other man said quietly as he passed. They both steered Kenobi away, and Kylo sneezed as they got further down the corridor.

 

Phasma’s report was waiting for him when he returned to his office. It disturbed Kylo. She liked them. It was written in formal, concise language, but Kylo had known his quartermaster long enough to read between the lines. They were respectful; they didn’t mouth off or question orders. The team worked effectively; they didn’t spend too much time bickering, and they got their jobs done. They were knowledgeable. Kylo didn’t know what that one translated to, and that irked him further. The most damning thing, though, was the conclusion.

Phasma had approved Lieutenant Mitaka’s request for impressment. When the _Finalizer_ took their leave of Earth, Kenobi, Dameron, and Trooper would be held aboard.

 

\--

 

When Rey, Finn, and Poe returned to their room, Rose and Paige were waiting for them. They were accompanied by a medium-height, round man with space-pale skin and a friendly face. He was introduced, as they piled through the door past BB-8, as their cousin Vinny.

“So, walk me through this again. How are you related?” Poe asked as he sifted through the desk drawer for the can opener. At his feet, BB-8 was performing his ritual supper dance.

“I was five years old when my Mom and Dad piled us onto Discovery. Their mom is fifteen years younger than mine. She was the kid sister,” Vinny said, maneuvering a large cardboard box into the room. He set the box on the desk, and bent down to let BB-8 sniff his hand.

“Okay, so how does this deal work?” Rey asked.

“Basically, the ship makes demands from Earth at least once a week. Earth is so desperate for the ship to go away that they’re willing to give up just about anything that goes on the list,” Vinny explained.

“The list goes to the quartermaster, then the colonel, and then back to inventory for delivery. It doesn’t get a final check when it’s delivered, so,” Vinny shrugged. “A lot of stuff gets added, honestly.”

“So, somebody adds the dog food to the list after it’s been approved, it goes down to Earth, and then we get whatever we want?” Poe asked, plopping BB-8’s dish on the floor.

“Well, it gets put ‘in care of cargo management’,” Vinny said, rubbing the back of his neck. “The cargo team gets a lot of stuff that’s considered care of, from war reparations to spare metal. This just gets the same label, and then gets picked up under a faulty work order. You know, broken lightbulbs, bad door panels. You get the idea.”

“And it works?” Finn asked.

“Paige and I have a TV and get tea and gummy bears. The team in the suite next to us get lemon-lime bath bombs, crossword puzzles from all of the big newspapers, and a case of pretzel Goldfish every week,” Rose said.

“What channels do you get?” Poe asked.

“Telemundo, some ESPN, and Hallmark. Wall standard,” Paige answered quietly.

“You guys got Hallmark in Uniform?” Rey asked.

“You didn’t?” Rose replied.

“No, we got every sports channel, literally under the Sun,” Rey replied. Finn and Poe nodded along.

“That… sucks,” Rose said. Finn and Poe kept nodding.

“Okay,” Vinny said, rising from the desk chair. He’d been quietly petting BB-8, cooing about good doggies and the like. “I’ll get the order in on the next one. Next comes the matter of payment.

“This guy,” he said, pointing at BB-8.

“Not gonna happen. He’s my dog, he stays with me,” Poe said gruffly.

“Well, yeah, but when I come by to drop stuff off, I want to sit and pet him,” Vinny said. “Dogs weren’t really a thing on Discovery, and the closest thing out in the galaxy is an akk, and those aren’t usually cuddly like this guy.”

“I don’t see why not,” Finn said slowly, face pensive.

“Make sure you close the door,” Rey said.

“We’ve got a deal. See you in a couple days,” Vinny said, and extended a hand to Poe. He took it, and smiled wanly, still reserved. BB-8 bounced around their feet, as if he knew that more dinners had just been assured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you I'd figure out how to feed the dog.  
> There was actually a lot going on in this chapter. Like, a lot. The biggest is probably that Kylo had a moment of doubt. Well, that and the smuggling ring.
> 
> I start classes on August 21st, which is Monday. Be advised: my posting schedule, as weird as it is right now, is going to go to absolute shit once I'm back in school. If you get worried, check my [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/otterlyanonymous), since I'll probably still check in there even if I'm not writing or should be sleeping.


	10. Schematics

Kylo was exhausted. One of Earth’s larger factions decided to try flexing military muscle. As other factions tried to talk them down, the _Finalizer_ had run the TIEs throughout the week, everything from simple maneuver drills to touch-and-go missions around Mars and back. The faction in question had backed down a few hours ago.

The report for the Chancellor was boring really. Nothing much had happened, and the TIEs were excellent. Kylo had fallen asleep at his desk briefly, and woke with a shock to Hux shoving a datapad under his nose.

“Ren!” he’d shouted, prompting the Captain’s eyes to snap open.

“Hux,” Kylo replied, shifting more upright.

“Did you authorize power supply inhibitors?” Hux snapped, datapad still far too close to Kylo’s face for comfort. He took it gingerly, quirking an eyebrow at Hux before scrolling through it.

“For the record, I did not. Have more confidence in my ability to run my ship, Hux,” he said as he scowled at the words. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hux pull a face.

The data readout and re-drawn schematics reflected the additions on all five battery cores. He didn’t order the inhibitors. Why would he? It was wartime, and he wanted a place at the front. Cutting the flow of power through the ship would be disastrous, from stem to stern, in certain circumstances. If the shields overloaded, if they’d fully-charged the main gun. If they’d gone out to Sol for recharging.

Kylo felt a cold sweat trickle down the back of his neck, catching his upraised hairs as it went. They’d come very, very close in the battle, and would’ve been damned for sure if they’d gone along with the planned recharge on course back to Arkanis. No wonder Hux was pissed, he was probably terrified as badly as Kylo was.

“Who figured this out? None of the engineers tasked with core control have said anything before now.”

“Some repair team or other. One of them surveyed the electrical system and spotted the discrepancies afterward.”

“There’s an electrician that’s memorized the designs for the battery cores of a Class E Imperial Ship-of-the-Line?” Kylo asked dryly, setting the datapad on the desk. Hux rolled his eyes.

“One of Phasma’s new favorites. Terrans. She’s keeping them, she says,” he said bitterly. Kylo blinked.

“Terrans?” Kylo asked, eyebrow raised.

“The impressment order is already signed, too.”

 

\--

 

Rey wiped her forehead on her sleeve as she sat up. Finn and Poe were on the other side of Battery Core Room 4, checking the panel readouts and other wiring.

After the last week’s stint of repairs on the breached room, she’d had a niggling feeling that she was missing something. Phasma hadn’t recalled the manuals and datasheets on the systems, so Rey had gone back through them. Sure enough, one of the pieces she’d repaired wasn’t supposed to be there, a giant circuit of daisy-chained capacitors siphoning power from the main core at a percentage that was mind-boggling. If the ship had drawn too much power, the resulting short would’ve been catastrophic. Now she and the team were tasked with checking over the other cores from top to bottom, looking for any other forms of sabotage.

“How are those power readouts?” Rey called.

“Solid green. How did nobody notice this?” Finn answered.

“They were still green, but only barely. Anybody who didn’t know any better would think it’s an anomaly, not a problem. It would’ve been really dangerous in combat,” Rey replied, standing up and the legs of the jumpsuit off. “If the shields had gone down over Earth, I imagine at least one of these things would have overloaded hard.”

“And by hard overload you mean?” Poe asked, trailing off slightly.

“Boom,” Finn answered before Rey. She gestured toward him nodding.

“Good that we’re clear,” Poe said stiffly.

 

\--

 

Kylo was pacing across the bridge. Ordinarily, he’d assign some sort of accolade to a crewmember that had done something as important as this inhibitor business. He’d been fine with it, planning the medals to pin until Hux had said that it was a team of Terrans. Not only were they ineligible until the ship returned to imperial space, it had him anxious.

The _Finalizer_ was his ship. It held his crew. It had been sabotaged, and no one noticed. The last time that anyone aside from the engineers on the crew would have been aboard the ship was in dry-dock around Kamino while resupplying for this mission. Perhaps it was a spy. Well, it had to be. Why would anyone in the Empire sabotage the _Finalizer_?

Hux entered the bridge, and stopped by Kylo’s chair.

“Ren,” he started. “Stop pacing. Ren, the team reports that the battery cores are all to normal operational parameters.”

“Where’s the messenger?” Kylo asked irritably.

“I was going to continue,” Hux said, teeth grit. “They aren’t crew officially, so they aren’t eligible for awards. However, since this does merit notice, I thought you might be interested in moving them to the Officer wing.”

Kylo looked at him as if he’d grown another head.

“I wasn’t planning anything, actually.”

“Well you should be. This team has gone above and beyond their duties. They’re a good example for all of the crew, not just the Terrans and engineers,” Hux replied. Kylo quirked an eyebrow.

“I’ll take it under consideration,” he relented. Hux’s own eyebrows shot upward for a moment, and he turned to walk away.

“Why are you so interested in this, Hux?”

“I said earlier,” the Colonel replied, still walking. “Phasma wants to keep them. If they’re worth having around, they’re worth treating properly.”

 

\--

 

When the trio returned to their room after dinner, BB-8 was sleeping under Poe’s bunk and there was a box placed just inside the door that Rey nearly tripped over. There was a work order for a broken light taped to the top.

“Looks like our first gift box is here,” Poe observed, pulling up the tape on the side. There were a bunch of dog food tins, ground coffee, a few chocolate bars, and a bag of Cheetos that Finn lunged at before Rey could grab them. The bulk of the box was taken up by a television set, about 22 inches diagonally by Poe’s guess and already spliced to plug into the wall outlet in their room. It took pride of place on the desk, framed by tablets, manuals, and the coffee maker.

Finn set about making coffee while Poe fed BB-8 and Rey straightened up what she could around her roommates. With chores done, they shuffled through preparing for bed, and then piled into the bottom bunks with cups of coffee and watched raptly as Poe hit the power button on the remote. The TV blipped to life, with a hazy image of Sports Center.

“So it looks like we get,” Poe said, flipping through the channels. “ESPN One, ESPN Two, ESPN-U, Hallmark, and Telemundo. Just as billed. Where do we sta--?”

Poe stopped midsentence. His thumb had slipped on the channel down button. The Science Channel’s ad for one of their shows popped into glorious high definition. He hit the channel up button, and ESPN popped onto the screen, Sports Center playing footage from a football game. He pressed the channel down button. Once more, and Hallmark was a bit fuzzy, playing a rom-com with a Christmas tree in the background. Poe hit the channel up button. Sports Center was playing basketball highlights now.

“Okay then. What are we watching?”

“What’s on the Science Channel?” Finn asked, sitting up slightly. Poe tuned back to the Science Channel. Machine parts spun on a conveyor belt, and a deep, gentle voice narrated the process.

“Is that ‘How It’s Made’?” Rey asked excitedly as she pulled BB-8 up to her bed. “ _Yes_.”

“How is this show, like, fifty years old and still on?” Poe asked.

“I think it’s soothing,” Finn said dreamily, eyes glued to the screen.

The metal pieces on screen were spun into coils and cut in a perfect loop. The trio released a collective sigh.

 

\--

 

It was two hours until curfew when Phasma and Hux collected Kylo from his office.

“Why am I doing this? I have reports to check,” he protested as he shuffled down the corridor. There was an additional pair of troopers and a cargo manager in tow. It was a reminder; Terrans had a lot of stuff.

“You’re the Captain, sir. It’s your ship,” Phasma said gently. He glared at her. “You would ordinarily pin medals on their chests. You can inform them of their living upgrade.”

Normally, Kylo wouldn’t put up with anyone talking to him like that. It was Phasma, she could physically hurt him if she wanted to, and he was too tired to pick a fight anyway. He growled uncomfortably.

They arrived at the room in question, and Phasma pressed the door chime. There was a scrambling sound from inside. After a long, awkward moment, the door slid open and Kenobi stepped out. She was already wearing sleep clothes, a long-sleeved maroon shirt with “Arizona State” across the front in yellow block text hung loosely over light pink, slightly fuzzy pants with small animals on them. She’d pulled her fabric shoes on to step out to the hallway, but hadn’t tied them. Her hair was down, and damp. As she recognized the party, she crossed her arms over her chest. Something in Kylo’s chest stirred.

“Hello there. To what do we owe this pleasure?” she asked. Kylo sneezed.

“Kenobi,” he started, and sneezed again. “In recognition of your team’s contributions to the ship…”

Kylo paused to sneeze again. His nose was growing stuffier by the moment.

“On behalf of the crew of the Finalizer, I’m moving your team to the Officer’s wing in a suite.”

“We’re good, thanks,” she said, and turned back to the room.

“An officer suite is much bigger,” he said. She paused, and then reached up to the door and knocked. Dameron and Trooper appeared in short order. Kylo sneezed again, and his eyes started to water as a blast of floral-scented air rushed out with them.

“Want to move?” she asked. Dameron narrowed his eyes. She summarized. With a series of gestures and whispers, they seemed to debate back and forth, over what, Kylo had no idea. Beside him, Hux seemed to be very interested in the goings-on.

“Are you accepting or not?” Kylo finally asked. Internally, he cringed at the nasal tone. Kenobi turned to him and shrugged.

“Next time, lead with the increase in space. We’ll come back for our stuff.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last chapter before school starts. I should be sleeping right now, but fuck circadian rhythms.
> 
> Not as much going on this chapter, and the next chapter is going to be a very important one for Kylo Ren.
> 
> In the meantime, I could only schedule one of my classes for 9:30 in the morning, so I'm gonna go to bed. Good luck to everybody starting school again!


	11. Contemplations

The new digs were sweet. Well, that’s how Rey’s Grandpa Ben would’ve described them. The main entry was centered against the wall, with a large, squishy-looking sectional sofa and dark-stained wooden coffee table to the left in the corner, opposite a tall bookshelf with titles in Aurebesh.

The coffee table and shelf matched the modest four-person dining table in the middle of the common area, with chairs whose square, white cushions matched the sofa. Four personal rooms split off from the side walls, and two more doors next to the kitchenette seemed to be bathrooms.

The kitchen had a sink, refrigerator, microwave-type of machine, and a small sink. There weren’t any overhead cabinets, and the under-counter cabinets slid open with sensors like those on doors. As Rey peaked into one, a small LED on the bottom of the counter top lit the small space.

The bedrooms were all equally equipped with the same desk, chair, closet, and side table in combinations of chrome, white, and dark wood that the rest of the built-in furnishings had. The beds were softer, though still best compared to extra-long twin mattresses. More critically, though, they were separated. As much as Rey loved Finn and Poe like brothers, living in quarters the size of a single bedroom in this suite wasn’t her first choice.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Overall, the space felt incredibly large for being on a spaceship, and just comfortable enough to denote higher status than the NCO room that the trio had been sharing. Then again, when had the _Finalizer_ ever followed Earth’s standards of ship building or science fiction? The ship was enormous, only a little smaller half the length of the Moon, and yet it sustained itself with oxygen and water almost infinitely. What was one more oddity to the mix?

Captain Ren, Colonel Hux, and Phasma were still standing back toward the door. Finn and Poe looked awed, so Rey presumed that she had a similar look of shock and appreciation on her face. After inspecting most of the rooms, they assembled at the door again. Hux looked vaguely amused, but Ren looked like he’d discovered the universe’s ultimate secret.

They were led back to pack and move their things, with a pass allowing them to be out past curfew and the next day off. Just as abruptly as the brass had arrived, they departed, leaving the cargo crewman behind. It was one of Vinny’s crewmen, Rex, who was a little younger than Rey and stick-thin with the same sort of friendly vibe and face that Poe had framed by light blonde hair.

“I’ve never seen one,” he marveled, bending to pet BB-8 as Rey started emptying her foot locker into her bag. “A dog, I mean. I’m not from Earth, my parents were already imperial citizens when I was born. My mom had one, she said. A… golden receiver.”

“Retriever. Good dogs, very friendly,” Poe replied, likewise shoving his clothes into his backpack.

“That’s what Ma always said too.”

“Guys,” Finn whined. “Have you seen my Notre Dame hoodie?”

“It’s in my stuff, Finn,” Rey said. “I told you that before.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he said, leaning over the edge of his bunk to take a few cans of BB-8’s food from Poe.

“Wait, what are we going to do with BB-8?” Rey asked. All motion in the room stopped. Everyone seemed to think for a moment, and then Rex snapped his fingers.

“We’ll call Vinny.”

“Wouldn’t that be suspicious?” Finn challenged, eyebrow raised critically.

“Not if there was a reason for it,” Rex said, looking around the room. His eyes settled on the light bulb in the ceiling.

“BB-8 doesn’t just go with anyone, though,” Rey countered. “So how will this work?”

“BB-8 will stay put if he’s told to,” Poe said, looking at the large cardboard box in the corner. It had held their smuggled goods, and it was suitably large for the Corgi, who sat under the desk watching the packing and talking like a tennis match.

“Okay, stop me if there’s a problem,” he continued after a moment, and laid out a plan that was just crazy enough to have a chance at working.

 

\--

 

Kylo Ren had finally solved the mystery to his plague. It was stupidly simple. He stared at the ceiling, too proud of himself and his mental breakthrough to sleep.

 

He was allergic to Kenobi.

 

It had taken him almost five weeks to conclude as much, but he hadn’t been aware of her existence for the first two. They crossed paths at least once a day, even when he tried to avoid the routes her team would be inclined to take. Whenever he saw her, his nose clogged up, his eyes began to water, his heart raced, and he felt feverish. It was almost like living around Hux again. Almost, since his heart hadn’t tried to burst from his chest, and he’d never had problems with momentary fevers around the Colonel.

What were the preventative measures? Was it _possible_ to take a supplement in the mornings to avoid the worst of the symptoms? Or would he have to avoid Kenobi from now on?

That last one would be more difficult with her team being moved up to the same deck as his quarters. Why had he let himself be talked into that? Right. Phasma. How did that even happen? The idea of Phasma taking such a liking to anyone boggled his mind. She worked closest with Hux, managed to operate more efficiently and civilly than he did with the man, and Kylo privately wasn’t sure she would even tolerate him outside of what was required.

It was great timing on this discovery. The end of the week was a Knights’ Meeting, the unofficial name for the holoconferences Snoke held with his ship captains. Kylo had seen the result of weakness shown in those meetings before, and this problem would definitely be seen as such. He sniffed at the thought. His father would have called the meeting a snake pit. The image of shuddering, leather-clad shoulders rose in his mind, with a gritty voice extolling a hatred for snakes. Kylo rolled over. He needed to get rid of those thoughts. They were just another weakness. This planet was full of weaknesses.

 

\--

 

It was a strange sort of caravan that marched down the hallway about half an hour before the ship’s curfew. Vinny and Rex took point, a hand cart and large box each. Poe walked next to Vinny, whose large box held a very nervous BB-8. Rex had the smuggled box from earlier in the day. Rey and Finn trailed behind them. Finn was nervous and twitchy, looking over his shoulder and watching the halls. Rey walked with a practiced indifference. If she walked like nothing was different and she was supposed to be there, then nothing was different and she was supposed to be there.

“Keep calm,” Finn repeated under his breath, eyeing a passing patrol of stormtroopers. “Keep calm.”

“Finn,” Rey said shortly, drawing his attention. “Stop freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out."

“You are. Stoppit.”

The group turned a corner, and almost froze. Colonel Hux, with his long service trench coat draped over his shoulders and cap jammed on his head, was waiting for the same service lift that the group had been planning to take. Poe glanced at Vinny and Rex, who shrugged. Rey stepped around them. Finn tried to hold her back.

“Colonel, should we wait for the next one?” she asked. Hux noticed them then, and eyed the two hand carts and other luggage with distaste. Then his eyes locked onto to BB-8’s box.

“I don’t see why not. You’re on the same floor, aren’t you?” he seemed to purr. Rey was reminded of the politicians and businessmen she’d met with her grandfather, how they all had what he’d called “snake oil charm” and arrogance. She was still put off by his accent, which was so her grandfather and some of his oldest friends, who had all gone to school in England together.

There was a soft chime, and the elevator door slid open. Hux gestured for the group to go first with a smirk that made Rey’s stomach clench and her shoulders tense. She took her place in the elevator, in front of Rex and the second cart. Hux stepped in, forced into her personal space as the doors closed. The elevator jumped upward, startling the Terrans and whipping BB-8 into a frenzy. Rey hoped Hux wouldn’t notice. He did.

“What’s in that box?” he asked, tilting his head toward the first cart. Finn’s eyes flared with alarm. Poe nudged the box with his foot, shifting it back onto the cart.

“Coffee maker and some other home goods,” Rey said easily. Hux’s red eyebrow rose.

“Your coffee maker moves?” he asked. Rey’s skin crawled.

“It’s a bit small for the box. It was probably just the sudden movement that shuffled it,” she answered. In her periphery, Finn was a step away from panic. The elevator stopped. BB-8 shuffled in the box. Hux looked at the open doors, then the box, then back to Rey.

“See that you find a smaller box next time,” he said stiffly, and swept out of the elevator. Rey turned to look at Poe and Finn, who shrugged. Rex and Vinny looked shell-shocked.

“I thought we were busted for sure,” Rex whispered, as he pushed the cart out.

“It’s only wrong if you get caught,” Rey said. “Until then, the only problem you have is the one you create. Looking at you, Finn.”

Finn squawked, and crossed his arms defensively. Poe chuckled.

“I didn’t freak out!”

“You came close,” Vinny said, patting Finn’s arm sympathetically.

 

\--

 

Kylo was on the bridge early the next morning. With a steaming cup of caf in hand and datapad under his arm, he reported in before 0500 local time. Most of the planet below was still dark, only a few pinpricks of light visible through the hole in the Terran defense system. It was beautiful, in a way. Nothing like the lights of Coruscant, or the planetary shields of Arkanis, or the blue and green marbling of Corellia and Ryloth, but it was pretty all the same. Earth, for all its complications, was unique in Kylo’s experience of the galaxy. He took a sip of caf.

Then again, maybe not. He was still an outsider here. He didn’t belong. How could he? He was a foreigner, and a conqueror at that. Planets didn’t take well to being conquered, to subjugation. Yet, Earth had tacitly taken every demand, met it beyond expectation, and asked for the next. Part of him wondered at their game, if they were plotting some sort of resistance under a veneer of willing compliance.

The thought soured his mood, and he took another sip of caf. Kylo dared them to try that kind of druk. He dared them. His ship would be ready. They caught him by surprise once, and that was his fault. He could admit that. All the same, he wasn’t a Captain of such a valuable ship for nothing. He wouldn’t be fooled again.

At least, that’s what he hoped. He hoped he was strong enough to resist this planet, and that terrified him. It was a clawing, burning sensation up his spine and the back of his neck, over which it seemed to tighten. He didn’t like the acute awareness of the Chancellor’s implant against his skin that he had developed around this planet. It sometimes felt like it might just kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's short. I know. It didn't feel like it needed more words, though. Also, this weekend was a holiday here in the States, so I took the opportunity to finish this one up. Chapter 12 is going to have some serious plot going, and that should resolve some questions from last chapter. I wanted to get in a little bit of lightness before that, because Snoke is going to pop up and it will probably be unpleasant.
> 
> If anybody's wondering, school is long and I want to die but I'm having fun. So, basically, the semester has started and everything's going okay. I've already had a test and a project for a couple of my classes, and I traded sections for another class because I didn't vibe with the professor or my classmates.


	12. The Snake Pit

The end of the week arrived with little fanfare. Kylo barely registered the date when he woke in the morning, and felt little at all when he recalled the occasion. Kenobi and company had been given the last two days off, and he’d been able to avoid them. Between that, and going back for another anti-allergy shot from the med bay, he was nearly back to full health. And just in time.

The Knights’ Meeting was set for the middle of the afternoon by Earth’s time. He sighed, stretching his arms above his head and looking out the viewport in his quarters. There would be papers to review in the lead-up, to make sure any reports he gave were as accurate as possible. The meeting would take most of the day.

There were about 12000 ships in the Navy of the Greater Arkanisian Empire. Of them, Chancellor Snoke had promoted nearly 300 himself. The others were assigned by admirals and awarded as combat commissions. Of those 300, though, only 50 were considered destroyers, ships-of-line, and fleet flagships. Half of the captains in this Knights’ Meeting would be admirals, including Grand Admiral Thrawn and Fleet Admiral Sloane, war heroes and leaders well above Kylo’s pay-grade.

The meetings were highly political, a given with the who’s-who that made the roll call. A young Captain that ran their mouth in one of these gatherings could make or break their career. Considering that any captains in the meeting were considered prospective admirals, such events were unfortunate. More than one had lost his command, or been sent to the outer reaches of the galaxy for bogus patrols of nowhere. It was best to be prepared.

Maybe enough preparation would stop the churning in his guts, the deep-seeded fear that he was in a kind of mortal peril. Dwelling on it took time away from his notes, and so he refocused.

 

About noon, Hux dropped by. He was stressed, and hadn’t taken as much care with his hygiene. The coarse ginger hairs on his coat sent Kylo into a sneezing fit and Hux rolled his eyes in annoyance.

“Sorry to inconvenience you, Colonel,” Kylo snipped, blowing his nose into a tissue from the box on his desk.

“Not the first of the day, not the last,” Hux replied, dropping a holopad on the desk.

“And that is?”

“I noticed a series of discrepancies between the cargo mass and storage volume numbers to what has been ordered. We’re taking in more than we officially ordered from Earth. The investigation turned up a smuggling operation. They add on items after Phasma or I make the final checks, and then they hold them ‘in care’ as maintenance equipment.”

“That’s… actually pretty clever. How did you figure that out?” Kylo asked. Hux looked amused.

“I caught a couple of them moving goods. I mentioned it in the report, but I don’t think it’s worth pursuing at this time. One, it’s another hoop for Earth to jump through, and two, it’s not harmful to us as it is. The differences in the numbers are only about point one percent of our total intake, and they’re not even that significant to our total capacity.”

“It is disturbing that someone thought to try,” Kylo said. Hux nodded.

“I agree but we have far more pressing concerns, I should think, than an enterprising cargo manager.”

Kylo quirked an eyebrow and began reading. Hux took his leave quietly. While Kylo was required for these meetings, Hux was not. His tasks would increase to pretty much taking over the ship for the afternoon, especially when the Captain inevitably left the large council room in the belly of the ship and marched directly to his room for the night two to four hours before he would normally end work. It was emotionally and mentally draining, even if he didn’t find himself under scrutiny or punishment.

He wanted to punch something. Why now? Why did he have to deal with this _now_? Kylo sighed, and tried to reign in his temper. An alarm went off, and his temper snapped anyway. So did the desktop chronometer, whose only offense was ringing at the time Kylo had set earlier in the morning as his warning to get cleaned up before the conference.

“Kriff,” he growled, tossing the small device against the wall, smashing it further. Ignoring the broken glass and scattered components on the floor, he swept from his office.

It felt like a gallows march back to his room. He took a shower listlessly, and then shaved almost carelessly. With only a white towel slung around his hips, he strode into his closet and glared at the ornate formal uniform on the hanger.

Where the standard uniform was black, with little decoration aside from the sleeve stripes and his shoulder rank pips, the formal uniform was meant to put on a show. His was dark gray, with red stripes down the pants to shined black boots that went to his knees, under a jacket of the same color, save the sleeves, which were also red from the elbow down. The decorations took up most of his chest (and he barely had any compared to the likes of some of the lower admirals), and his rank insignia was heavy on his shoulders and sleeves. There was a metaphor there, but Kylo didn’t care so much as he wrestled the jacket over his shoulders, trying in vain not to disturb the fine balance of awards.

As he straightened everything, he recalled Hux’s objections, that uniforms ought to be functional before stylish. The normal uniforms were decent enough, but the formal uniforms—one of the medal’s pins jabbed into Kylo’s chest. The formal uniforms left plenty to be desired.

With a heaving sigh of relief, he buttoned the jacket, long, nimble fingers seeming to dance upward. Straightening the whole ensemble once more and checking the pleats, Kylo clipped his saber to his hip, and pulled on his gray sash, marking him as one of Snoke’s captains. It was officially called the First Order of Arkanis, or something, but Kylo thought the name was almost as pretentious in itself as the entire uniform.

He stepped into the hallway, and seemed to steel himself with every step toward the elevator. The meeting wasn’t set to start for an hour, but the holoprojections would go up half an hour before. Hurry up, and wait. The elevator was making him wait. Damned thing. Kriff, this whole day was pfassked. He wanted to hide under his desk and wait for this to blow over.

The doors slid open. Somewhere, some entity had a sense of humor. Kenobi, for her part, blinked in surprise behind the platters of cafeteria food. She wore the standard jumpsuit, but it was unzipped to show another casual shirt, this one with some kind of angry-looking animal in blue and yellow on gray. Under it was block text that read ‘Go Blue’. It struck him that the shirt was too big for her, even compared to the baggy jumpsuit.

“Good evening,” he said, and gestured for her to clear the elevator. She blinked dumbly.

“I didn’t know peacocks came in red and black,” she said, a hint of amusement lilting her voice like she was trying not to laugh. Kylo rolled his eyes. She seemed to get the idea, and stepped out of the elevator, top platter swaying dangerously until she shuffled to tuck it back under her chin. Kylo stopped to watch the motion, and was snapped back to reality by a rough sneeze that made his chest-full of metal clank together. He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button.

What was a peacock?

 

Right on time, the holoprojector in the center of the room sputtered to life. Thrawn, blue skin lifelike with the blue light of the projector, began roll call in his deep, gravelly voice. Kylo listened carefully for his name, counting the others he heard. Some were new, others were missing. He didn’t want to think about the reasons a name might struck from the roll. Thrawn called his name 217th, and he announced himself clearly. He could see the smug smirk on the Chancellor’s face, and it was a small reassurance. Kylo was meant to be there.

The roll call ended, and Thrawn stepped back for the Chancellor to take up the whole projector screen. His face was horrifying, its wrinkles and scars taking on an even creepier look at the larger scale. More than that, he looked displeased.

“Our _Great_ Empire is the most technologically developed military force in the _galaxy_. Our _Great_ Empire has the most _rigorous_ training for its soldiers, especially its _officers_ , in the _galaxy_. We spend the most _money_ , and have _twice as many_ ships as the next two most powerful regimes _combined_ ,” he began, and Kylo could almost feel the weight of the chip in his neck as the hologram stared him and the projects of the others down.

“So _why is it_ that in each of the last three military encounters the Greater Arkanisian Imperial Navy has had with the Hosnian Republic’s forces, our _Great Empire_ has been forced to run? _Why_ are we running, when we have the firepower and the training to outman and outgun these Hosnians? Hosnia’s weapons and ships were old when most of you in this conference were young!” Snoke slammed his fist on the armrest of his throne. Kylo flinched, and he felt like others did the same.

“You all need to stop losing battles, or I’ll give your ships and your titles to younger, hungrier Captains who _will_ win. For _example_ , Captain Kylo Ren has been on a special interest mission in the outer reaches of the galaxy. _He_ would take your places on the front lines before you could _blink_. Captain Ren, how _is_ your operation proceeding?”

Kylo blinked dumbly and shuffled forward.

“The _Finalizer_ ’s operation is progressing as planned in my last report,” he said nervously, trying to tame the tremor in his hands. “The ship is almost repaired and will be fit to leave within the next five to six weeks, Chancellor.”

“ _Excellent_ , Captain,” the Chancellor seemed to purr. The hairs on Kylo’s arms stood to brush the lining of his jacket sleeves. Kylo took a step back and exhaled slightly.

“Chancellor, could I bring to attention the mishandling of Captain Ren’s operation?” a voice called. Kylo’s eyes snapped upward. One of the older officers, Commodore Remlus, had commandeered the screen.

“Go ahead, Commodore,” the Chancellor indulged.

“Captain Ren has been in Earth orbit for almost six of their weeks. For being a low-technology planet, he’s taken a lot of time in his operation. He should’ve fired his main battery at full power and been done with the job weeks ago. Has he even tried recharging his systems?”

“ _Very_ interesting,” the Chancellor said. “Captain, any rebuttal?”

“It was not deemed appropriate at the time. First, we were too far away from the planet for anything more than missile bombardment, which proved ineffective. Then, we were too close to risk any reflection from their shielding, even as rudimentary as it is,” Kylo said, and then paused.

“What’s interesting to me is that, even though my report was submitted weeks ago, it hasn’t been published yet as far as I know,” he continued, eyes flicking to Thrawn, who nodded.

“Which begs the question, how did you know that the _Finalizer_ ’s main battery was not fully charged when it was fired?”

Remlus gaped, his face blanching. Chancellor Snoke seemed to take interest, as did Thrawn and Sloane.

“Our communications officer picked up the transmission of the report when it was sent out. The encryption of the transmission was poor,” the man said, floundering for words.

“Interesting,” Sloane cut in before Kylo or anyone else could. “I could have sworn that your ship and its sister were halfway across the galaxy with at least fifty ships and two of our Captains in attendance in between.”

“Well, I—”

“More than that,” Thrawn growled. “It seems interesting that you would call into question the transmission encryption when it was your ship that leaked the coordinates to the _Krennic_ and the _Tarkin_ recently. Both ships were forced to retreat from ambushes by Hosnian forces.”

“If I might also cut in, I find it very interesting, Commodore Remlus, that you mentioned systems that are critical to the power cores of the ship. It turns out that one of the repair teams recently discovered inhibitors in every battery core on my ship, and I never ordered them. In fact, there’s no formal order for such that’s ever been logged from the _Finalizer_.

“I don’t need to remind this body of the consequences for using such hardware in active combat zones. I estimate most of our sustained damage is a result of power fluctuations in the battery cores during combat.”

Kylo finished his line, but Sloane, Thrawn, and the Chancellor weren’t paying attention. Their eyes seemed to be on Remlus.

“Well it’s not like officers like Ren really deserve their titles anyway,” Remlus spluttered, defensive but only digging his hole deeper. “He’s an outsider. Nobody from his dirtball should _be_ in our Great Empire, to say _nothing_ of the First Order. He’s incompetent at best, a hazard at worst. It’s no surprise that he’s failed to destroy the planet of his forefathers, when his mother—”

“ _Commodore_ Remlus,” the Chancellor began. “I should think that _Captain_ would be a more appropriate title. You’ll report to Arkanis immediately, and turn over command of the Star Destroyer _Eliminator_ and terminate your membership with the First Order of Arkanis upon your return.

“Captain Ren. It seems there is now an opening among the Admiralty and on the front lines. _Commodore Ren_ , you will be expected in orbit around Arkanis in twelve weeks for a full inspection and new orders.”

“Yes, Chancellor,” Kylo replied, saluting crisply and stepping back from the projector to observe the rest of the meeting.

 

It seemed that things were going terribly on various fronts. The Chancellor wasn’t making a bigger issue out of small oversights in his opening remarks. The last three encounters with Hosnia had been retreats, and that was only because one of the Admirals’ fleet had been ambushed and resisted. There were actually more Arkanisian losses in the last ten weeks than there were victories, and that wasn’t good at all. No ships had been lost yet, but the general feeling went that it was only a matter of time.

As Kylo finally ended the meeting, he couldn’t help but feel that this latest promotion felt rather empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not dead. Between homework, illness, and Irma, the world's been trying lately. This was a plot-heavy chapter, and it introduced an idea that I've had sitting on the backburner for a little bit. It wasn't explicitly said, but Remlus was the architect of the inhibitor scheme. Kylo's a Captain, and there is a reason for that, aside from sheer talent. I hope a bit of that might've begun to come across. If not, I have no shame in editing it to make adjustments.
> 
> Chapter 13 will have Rey and Co. return. I didn't want to distract from what was going on with Kylo in this chapter, and I tend to write more of the trio anyway.
> 
> Edited to tweak timing.


	13. Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, heads up, this one isn't as light-hearted as some of the others. It's a little sadder than usual. This is your warning.

Rey sighed deeply. The three days off had been nice but when they had ended, the work came back with a vengeance and a frantic Mitaka. As it turns out, he hadn’t been appraised of their temporary assignment with Quartermaster Phasma until it was already in-progress. He’d then been worried that they’d done poorly and been sent back to Earth when he didn’t hear any more about them for almost ten days. Rey kind of felt bad, especially when she considered how little Mitaka had crossed her mind in the days they’d been away.

It was somewhat reassuring to have the soft-spoken bridge officer in her ear again. It was familiar, and with familiarity came routine. Routine was critical to her lifestyle, especially when it was as stressful as the work orders had become in the last three days.

She’d seen Ren as she was bringing back dinner for herself and the boys, celebrating their last off-day by skipping the cafeteria to watch shitty Hallmark movies until they fell asleep in a cluster on the sofa, BB-8 stretched across them. Ren had been dressed up for something, the uniform hilariously elaborate, like somebody had tried to take Napoleonic-era uniform design and make it futuristic. Coupled with the brooding and the gallows march, Ren had looked like an emo peacock. The image comparison still made her laugh. She usually managed to derail that thought process before she could admire the figure he cut under the ornate décor.

           

Today, they were repairing more of a bulkhead that had been breached. Finn and Poe were playing with power tools, shooting arcs of ferrous sparks off into space with glee as they cut and ground into the steel-like material of the ship’s hull to make space for the patches that they would weld into place. Well, Finn did most of the welding. Poe floated in place, acting as a human clamp and judging Finn’s spot placement between scrambling to cover his eyes.

Rey was charged with checking the room’s electrical systems, ensuring that no wires were damaged and no shorts were liable to pop out when someone flipped a light switch. She also had the unenviable task of checking voltage and amperage across each part of the circuit that ran through the room. The work was tedious and boring, but she hadn’t run across any ship-killing devices this time, so that was a plus.

Still, with the pace set by high command, this was the second room of the day and they hadn’t broken for lunch yet. The past three days had been the same way, working well into the afternoons before they were allowed a break, even just for food or to go to the bathroom. Even Rey was beginning to burn out, feeling her eyelids droop lower as the time between putting her suit on and taking it off stretched on.

“You missed a spot, Finn.”

“Where? How?” Finn asked, pulling the welding mask up, and tilting his head toward the line he was working on. “You don’t even know how to weld, how do you—oh come on, man!”

Poe was grinning, and moved quickly to deflect Finn’s jabs.

“Admit it, that one was pretty good,” he said, ever unrepentant. Finn slapped the visor back down, grumbling and went back to work.

“ _When you get to a stopping point, you’ve been approved for lunch,_ ” Mitaka said over the comm.

“Acknowledged, Mitaka,” Rey answered, watching the glow of the plasma torch for a moment before turning back to the wire she was splicing.

 

-

 

Kylo had been up to his eyeballs in new paperwork. To make matters worse, Hux was jealous. Worst yet, Kenobi had compared him to a land-bound bird whose feathers were a pompous, colorful mating tool. The first two were to be expected with the sudden promotion, but the last one, surprisingly, kind of hurt. Maybe it had to do with the stress at the time. That was it, undoubtedly. He was so stressed out about the Knights’ Meeting that the slightest provocation from anyone would’ve sent him over the edge.

He rolled his shoulders, banishing the thought. Phasma had supplied him with a set of Commodore’s pips and sleeve stripes, 3D printed out of the wrong material, durasteel melted from hull scrap, but it wasn’t like there was extra chromium laying around for them to use to make a proper set. They weighed a fair bit more than his old pips. For one, they were bigger to fit more details in the design. For two, the durasteel was denser than the brass of his Captain’s pips. More weight on his shoulders, both metaphorically and physically, and neither was particularly amusing.

He gave up with a sigh. Standing from the desk, Kylo stretched and turned to the window. Earth’s moon still hung largely in the frame, somehow even larger than it had seemed before. He sighed. Why did all of this have to get so kriffed up?

When the _Finalizer_ had departed, Kylo would’ve never dreamt that he’d be promoted in orbit around his parents’ home planet that he’d been told to destroy. Still intended to destroy, ultimately, although lately he’d felt a phantom weight in the bottom of his gut at that thought.

And why should he? The politicians were conniving and tricky, each looking for a piece of something they had no right or claim to. The regular citizens were massive herds of banthas, amassing and following wherever their slimy druk shepherds led them. The militaries were paranoid, and as concerned with fighting each other as they were fighting the ship.

But that was just it: Arkanis was just the same.

 

-

 

Rey was done. She’d counted 10 drops of sweat that managed to hit her eyes, one for every hour and a half in the suit. 15 hours at work, 1 hour for each meal (an immeasurable blessing), for the last 3 days. She had forgotten EVA fatigue; working in zero-g or close to was so much easier than dealing with the upper atmosphere of Earth, and the suits were so streamlined compared to the ones on the Wall that it was almost manageable. Now, though, 45 of 72 hours in the closed-in recycling system and up working had Rey’s lungs aching with every deep breath in the same way that her legs and arms ached with all but the smallest movements.

On top of it all, she’d missed the _one_ day that was always on her calendar. She could miss every Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas as long as she managed to mark February 21st. Granted time seemed to move differently on the ship, but as she’d prepared for her morning, she’d seen the bottom crawl of Sports Center labelled February 22nd.

 

She’d missed the anniversary of her grandfather’s passing, and damn if it didn’t sting more than the sweat in her eyes, the air in her lungs, and the strain on her muscles combined.

 

She didn’t mark the day out of duty or love. She began marking it as a 16-year-old shoved into the foster system to reassure herself that her minutes, days, and years with Grandpa Ben weren’t some fever dream built out of delusion. In the quiet nights in late February, she clung to the memories of being loved and cared for, of LA sunsets and bed time stories, replaced with Arizona heat and melted ice cream, which were replaced by nothing at all on the good days. February 21st was her ward against every muttered curse, slurred abuse, locked door, and reaching flabby hand in Unkar Plutt’s house, and she’d neglected it for the first time in 10 years. The feeling that settled in her stomach at that thought nearly made her vomit.

Rey skipped dinner. After checking the date, Finn and Poe understood, promising to bring a plate back for her later. She considered going back and curling into a fetal position with BB-8 and some shitty Hallmark movie, but ultimately decided to test fate. She walked out of the locker room, helmet abandoned on the bench in front of her locker with her gloves. She padded across the hangar, and stood in front of the transparent barrier. Looking out, there was only a thin sort of membrane between the hangar and open space. From experience, she knew it was finite, only about ten feet out at the furthest point, and tapering evenly to the sides of the bay doors. She’d walked through it, clamped magnetically with the same boots she wore now, on every EVA in the first two weeks of her stay on the _Finalizer_. Now, though, she slowly sank to the floor, and carefully inched across to stick her legs off the side of the hangar door. It was crazy, but she’d considered it every time she walked past the giant, open bubble since the shuttle landed a little over a month ago.

She took a deep breath, wincing at the sting in her lungs. Grandpa Ben would’ve loved the view. He used to tell her stories about the Earth space programs of old; the Space Race between the US and Soviet Russia, the space stations that did research in orbit, and satellites that took pictures of things so very far away. He would’ve loved looking back on Earth, looking at the Wall from the outside. He always said that even when humans left Earth, they usually weren’t accountants, PhDs in Finance or no. She could imagine him making a bad joke about seeing New York, London, and Paris at the same time, and that was when the dam broke.

Tears rushed hotly down her face, and sobs wracked her shoulders. She stared out at the lights of the land masses below, and pictured Grandpa Ben laughing at the stupid joke over lunch from the lousy student services building at the community college in Tucson, and managed a watery laugh. He’d have been proud of himself for it.

She was jerked out of her thoughts by a hand grabbing the back of the collar of her suit and yanking her back.

“What the kriff do you think you’re doing?” the deep voice bit out. Rey looked up into Captain, no, Commodore Ren’s face. He was visibly annoyed, and was carrying on about safety measures and the stupidity of sitting so close to the vacuum of space, especially with the gravity field active.

“And you _should_ kriffing know better! You’ve done space walks!” he howled, eyes alight as they drilled into her with his words.

“I was thinking,” she defended weakly.

“Are you so sure?” he snapped in a quick retort. Rey gaped, mentally grasping for an answer.

“Yes,” she settled on finally, trying to wriggle out of his grip on her suit collar. He held on. “Not that I’m sure it matters to you anyway, but I was looking for a moment to myself.”

He blinked, and then waved a hand, indicating the room. “Right. Privacy. On the main hangar deck. Carry on then, just do so _away_ from the pressure barrier.”

Ren didn’t wait for a response, didn’t seem to want one. Finally letting go of her suit, he spun on his heel and stalked off toward the elevator. I was only as she settled her weight back on her feet that she realized how close he’d been to her face, and that his eyes were closer to amber in the light, and had held something other than anger and annoyance.

 

-

 

That little laserbrain was going to get herself killed. Who the pfassk sat that close to the edge of space with no helmet on their spacesuit? ‘Thinking,’ she’d said. Yeah, right. Thinking about what?

The thought stopped Kylo dead in the elevator where he’d been pacing.

And then came the realization that she’d been crying; the hazel eyes that had glued themselves into his mind’s eye of late were bloodshot and puffy with tear stains running down from them. A nervous feeling settled in his stomach at the thought that he’d interrupted an attempt to do something regrettable. Before he could really account for the movement, his hand snapped out and cancelled the elevator, sending it back down to the hangar.

The doors slid open, and Kylo stomped out with purpose. Kenobi was gone. The knot in his stomach sank, and he set a deliberate stride to where he’d left her, in the far corner by the barrier. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but something in him refused to stop.

 

Nothing. She’d disappeared.

 

He turned around on the spot. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes. Where had she gone? Could she have fallen? Slowly, carefully, he tilted his head toward the edge to look down.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to get so close to the pressure barrier.”

Kylo practically sagged with relief. He turned to see her standing behind him, teal under suit visible under the gray standard jumpsuit, which had its top half tied around her waist. She was wearing the fabric shoes again, and he could see just the slightest hint of her ankles where they were lower than the under suit. She hadn’t showered yet, with sweaty flyaway hairs still stuck to her temples and her hair tied messily from where it had been bunched in the helmet.

Somehow, she was radiant. Less confusingly, Kylo’s stomach churned as he caught the ridiculous thought, and then went to war with his tongue to fight saying as much.

“You’re fine then,” he said instead. Kenobi looked pained, like he’d said something supremely obvious and stupid.

“Yes,” she said slowly, measuring the word and its letters with uncertainty. Kylo felt a hot surge of embarrassment. She was fine. He’d made an issue out of nothing. He felt like a schoolboy again, Ben Solo with his gangly limbs and big ears and spots and--

“Long day, is all. And I missed something important.”

“Oh,” he said. Maybe not nothing?

“It’s almost curfew. By your leave…” she trailed off, making eye contact. He felt disconnected as his head bobbed up and down. She started to move away.

“What did you miss?” he found himself asking, and clamped his mouth shut. She stopped and turned to face him. She was surprised.

“What?”

“You missed something. What was it?” he asked against every inkling of better judgement.

“The day my grandfather died. He’s the only family I can remember.”

“Oh,” he said. How was he supposed to reply to that?

“What was his name?” Okay, that works. Kenobi hesitated.

“Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive, I swear. Not that I've felt like it in a little while, but that's beside the point.
> 
> I made myself sad writing the last half of this chapter. I'm sorry if I got you too. 
> 
> I had this outlined months ago, when I was on my outlining kick, and I knew it was gonna suck. I thought about cramming more in front of it, but I hate filler. Even when there's stuff that feels like filler, I promise, there's something that will get used later in it. I can think of at least 3 lines that are setting up something else later, even if its mostly headcanons that I want to incorporate somehow.


	14. Decompression

Kylo hadn’t been expecting that.

Kriff, if that wasn’t the short version of this mission. He really needed to do something about his entire lack of foresight. It was unbecoming of someone of his station.  
“Oh,” he’d said. She’d said “Ben,” and he’d said “Oh.” He ran his hands through his hair, fingers not quite threading through completely as they met his pillow. He pulled his palms to cover his face instead, elbows sticking up pointedly from his reclining position.

It had been three days.

 

_Kriff._ He’d been _counting_.

 

With a heaving sigh, he sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. He could be working, _should be_ working. Perhaps rooting out that cargo fraud ring. Or writing new progress reports. Or overseeing preparations for a test flight around Mars and back. Something had to be done, and Commodore Kylo Ren could do it. He had to, otherwise he’d spend a fourth day replaying and berating his social interactions.

 

-

 

Rey was tired.

Frankly, she was usually tired. College made most people into caffeine-addicted insomniacs, and Rey had held a shitty retail job and an internship beyond that. Fatigue was nothing new, but working on the ship for the past week now had been redefining her limits. Most of it was the Bends. Shit, this was the worst case she’d ever had.

Finn and Poe weren’t doing much better. It was late now, they were all lounging in the common area after a dinner of “special order” microwave macaroni and cheese with canned tuna and peas mixed in. They were all pressing their backs into the cushions of the sofa, hoping to ease their strained bodies into standing. As it was, they had “found” (Rey hoped no one checked the rooms; explaining the hole in the wall would be difficult) the pressure controls in the environmental systems, and turned the oxygen levels up and lowered the pressure. The system had a failsafe that slowly corrected the environment back to the ship standard overnight, but the ability to turn their room into a hyperbaric chamber after a long day was incredibly helpful.

That bothered Rey though. Most of the crew was human, including the staff engineers. Somebody had to be able to do outside repairs, so where were the necessary facilities? They should at least have some facilities or breathing equipment if there were suits on board. She kept filing the thought away to ask Mitaka later, but finding the time to do much of anything was difficult. They were working on strength of will, coffee, and memory in muscles that were functioning only by the grace of ACE bandages and pain relief strips. Rey looked like a mummy under her clothes.

BB-8 whined in the corner. They all snapped their attention from separate thoughts to look at him. His stubby tail wiggled from his spot on the floor across the room, all four legs splayed out, chin on the floor.

“What’s up, Classified?” Rey asked. BB-8 wiggled a little more and then yipped.

“He’s been fed,” Finn groaned, slowly pulling himself upward to stand. It was difficult from the middle, and he fell back to where he started when a cramp hit.

“I think he’s bored,” Poe said, leveraging the right-side armrest to stand. “BB ball? Where’s your ball, buddy?”

BB-8 was up instantly, diving under the coffee table to pick up a beaten, patchy tennis ball and shove it into Poe’s hand. Rey smiled softly. The ball bounced off the floor, to the front wall, and then to the side wall. BB-8 gave chase, snatching it out of the air easily as it sailed back toward the couch. He took the ball to Rey next, and they spent a few minutes taking turns bouncing the ball about the room.

“Poor little guy,” Poe remarked, watching BB-8 paw at the bookshelf, where the ball had gotten stuck. “He’s gotta be bored out of his doggy mind up here all day. At least on the Wall, we could bring him into the control room.”

“Yeah and he’s got more space in here than in the last room,” Finn said, scooting over to the vacant right cushion.

“I wish he could have a friend,” Poe said, crouching gently to scratch behind BB-8’s ears as he freed the ball and tossed it over his shoulder.

 

-

 

Hux was in Kylo’s personal bubble almost as soon as he took his chair on the bridge.

“Can I help you?” Kylo asked, pulling up ship diagnostics for review.

“There’s been a problem with Earth,” Hux sighed.

“That’s an understatement.”

“This one is new,” Hux deadpanned. “There’s a hold on financial backing from one of the larger banks down there. The company’s president is demanding a meeting this afternoon.”

“When can we expect him?” Kylo asked, taking the proffered caf mug from a yeoman.

“He’s actually demanded ‘home field advantage’, which apparently a local term for—”

“Us going to him,” Kylo cut in with an agitated sigh. “This man does realize that we have the firepower to burn his ‘home field’ to dust, correct?”

“I don’t think it matters much to him,” Hux demurred. “Doing some research, he’s neglected holdings on his company for the last thirty years, even before he inherited the company. The rumor is that he’s been living on a private island in the middle of some ocean or another, and has barely been heard from in the last twenty years.”

“Why now? We’ve been here for close to a month and a half.”

"I have no idea, Ren. I lumped it in on the list of inconveniences caused by being near this planet and didn’t ask too many more questions.”

Kylo glared at Hux from his periphery, and took a moment to consider the brief. _Alderaan Bank and Trust_. That should be important, somehow relevant to him.

“Commodore, sir,” one of the communications officers prompted. “There’s an urgent communications request for you from the _Defender_ , sir.”

“I’ll take it in the conference room,” Kylo growled, setting his caf mug in the cup holder. It would probably be cold by the time he returned to it.

Thrawn was rarely the bearer of any news. It wasn’t something that he did, even before he was Grand Admiral. To see Thrawn in the conference room was an oddity to be sure, but Kylo thought he did well in stomping down any reactions.

“Grand Admiral,” he greeted with a respectful salute and his best civil expression.

"Commodore Ren. The Chancellor is dissatisfied with your progress reports. He’s dispatched his personal forces to the front.”

Well that wasn’t good. Not at all. Thrawn frowned slightly, and Kylo thought his face might have slipped.

“The Chancellor is calling all available forces to the front, but it is thought that Hosnian forces may be on their way to Earth. As you are still… _occupying_ the space, it is thought that you should be placed on notice for attack before your current objective is complete.

“Of course, if you can escalate your progression and complete mission objectives, there is need for any ship like the Finalizer at the front… even as patched together as it may be,” Thrawn said coolly. Kylo’s heart pounded. The front! Where he wanted to be!

“I’ll see to it that the mission timeline is adjusted accordingly, sir,” Kylo intoned slowly, words struggling against the mental math of time, personnel, and tasks remaining. He wasn’t entirely sure that the staff would be able to pull it off, but his mouth had already made that decision for all of them.

“Very well, Commodore Ren. Thrawn out.”

 

-

 

Rey dropped the wrench with a hissed curse. Her wrist felt like it was being ripped from the joint with every twist of the bolt she was trying to fasten in the control panel she was working on. Her hair was plastered to her temples and forehead, and her lungs burned. As she stumbled back her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground with a squeak.

“ _Is everything okay, Kenobi?_ ” Mitaka asked, worry edging into his voice. Rey stumbled for an answer as she fumbled for purchase to pull herself back to her feet. Finally, she sagged to the deck.

“No,” she said pitifully.

“ _Trooper, Dameron, try to help her back inside. I’ll see if I can get a substitute team to take over for the rest of the day._ ”

“Alright, Mitaka,” Finn answered, stepping over gingerly to take Rey’s left side as Poe took her right. They hoisted upward together, only for Poe and Finn to nearly drop as well. They shuffled together, slowly and carefully, toward the air bubble. When they reached the hangar, they collapsed into a pile. Gasping, Rey looked up into Phasma’s chrome helmet. The quartermaster looked them up and down.

“Medical,” she called over comms, “Have a team dispatched to the hangar to pick up one of the repair teams. They’re suffering advanced flight fatigue, and will need attending.”

A group of Stormtroopers was pulled to load them on to gurneys, and Rey felt like her lungs were about to explode when one of them tapped the release on her helmet. Air flooded in, and her lungs weren’t ready for the change.

“FN-1007! Reseal the helmet!” Phasma barked. The trooper’s fingers fumbled, but they managed to close the helmet back before the medical team in bright white and light gray uniforms arrived to escort them.

 

Rey wasn’t completely sure what happened after that. Her brain seemed to swim through a haze of colorful flashes and odd, unplaceable noises. When she finally regained some semblance of consciousness, it took her awhile to figure out where she was. She couldn’t see the room very well with an oxygen mask strapped to her face while she was tilted downward.

“How do you feel?” Finn’s voice floated, but Rey couldn’t see him. She took a moment to decide.

“Generally awful,” she mumbled.

“You missed it,” came Poe’s voice next. “One of the doctors went off on Phasma. Apparently, they’ve sent home like five teams for the Bends. Ren’s schedule just keeps escalating.”

“He’s gonna have to pull new teams if he wants to keep this timeline,” Finn commented. Rey hummed. She wanted to yawn. She faintly heard the door sliding open.

“So she’s finally awake, hmm?” the new voice asked nonchalantly. “Hello, Miss Kenobi, I’m Doctor Reinfro, and I’ve been attending to you and your team. You’ve been diagnosed with severe flight fatigue. Do you understand that term?”

“Decompression sickness. We also call it barotrauma or the Bends. Injury due to rapid pressure decrease, caused by nitrogen forming bubbles in tissues or blood.”

“Very good. Are you familiar with the treatment procedure?” he asked, tablet blocking Rey’s eyes from the piercing overhead light.

"I’m familiar with the Earth standard procedure.”

“Great. I’ll tilt you back up to take some blood samples and administer a full physical. You’ve been out for about twenty standard hours. When we’re finished, all three of you are clear for escort back to your quarters for rest,” Reinfro said, pressing buttons. The motors under the cot started slowly shifting upward.

Rey sat up slowly, and lifted the mask away from her face. Taking a deep breath, her lungs seemed to catch deep down, but otherwise, her breathing was easier than it had been before. She shifted her legs to stand up gradually, Reinfro watching for any sign of collapse. It was daunting, but as she finally stood, she caught her reflection in a mirror. Patchy, angry red rashes covered her arms and legs, and she could feel the same pains over most of her body in the hospital gown.

“You’re all covered in nitrogen rashes. Nasty, but they’ll heal. Right this way, Miss Kenobi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even want to think about how long it's been since I posted a chapter. I am so terribly sorry for that, and it's good to be back.
> 
> This semester kicked my ass, I had a couple of relatives die, and I got my first job. Working retail for the holiday season has been a relatively high point in my last three months, and if that doesn't tell you enough, I don't know what more to say.   
> Of course the highest point in the year was going to see TLJ. I went at 1:15 Friday morning, got home after 4 AM, and had a raging headache from the hype and the surround sound theater that I went to see it in. Then I got to see it again for my birthday on Tuesday.
> 
> The support for the last chapter was awesome, by the way. I hope y'all enjoy this one. I'm already working on some of Chapter 15, so hopefully I can get that one out in time for the New Year.
> 
> If you're new and want to say hi, I'm on [Tumblr as OtterlyAnonymous.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/otterlyanonymous)


	15. Change

It was mid-afternoon, and Kylo was contemplating an early dinner when the door chime in his office sounded.

“Come in,” he called, expecting Hux to stomp in and throw a datapad under his nose. Instead, Phasma stepped in rigidly. Bad news.

"Commodore,” she greeted. This wouldn’t be good.

“Phasma,” he said, setting the report he’d been reading aside.

“I’ve just come from Medical, where I received a rather _spirited_ lecture from one of our doctors regarding the Terran crews,” she said, pausing for him to announce a lack of interest.

“Continue,” he prompted instead.

“Work began with twenty-eight crews, and of them, five have been sent back to Earth for emergency treatment for flight fatigue.

“Until yesterday, only one crew had not been seen for treatment. They made a show of collapsing on the main hangar floor yesterday afternoon. Out of all twenty-eight crews, three members each, every single Terran has been diagnosed with flight fatigue.”

Phasma remained stoic, but Kylo knew she wasn’t happy to have crews dropping out and getting sick. One who didn’t know that the Army Captain, the Quartermaster of the _Finalizer_ was worried. His right eyebrow rose upward as the corners of his mouth twitched downward.

Flight fatigue? That’s never been a problem before, except for pilots on the front.”

“Most extravehicular maintenance teams are dry-docked at major Imperial ports, and cycle on and off in six hour shifts with triple the staff. They also have more facilities for treatment than we do.

“You mentioned the pilots. The average frontline TIE pilot spends twelve hours every standard cycle in a cockpit. These Terran engineers have been working nearly fifteen hours every cycle for the last week.”

Kylo sat back in his chair. Druk. They could make the previously set timeline on a tight deadline, but the new one that Thrawn had cajoled him into would be nearly impossible.

“What are we doing for treatment?” he asked.

“Oxygen treatment, fluids, and lots of rest. The first teams diagnosed are just returning to limited duty from diagnosis a week ago. The worry is that they’ll be out of commission again soon. The medical team is requesting permission to allow the specialty teams to use the pilots’ facilities.”

“We’re only carrying a single flight group. We have facilities and bunks for three. Start moving the remaining teams from the lower levels to the unoccupied pilot quarters. At the least, they’ll have easier access to the facilities but it’s probably more comfortable as well.”

“As for teams not in the lower levels?” Phasma asked carefully. There was only one team housed outside the lower levels—Kylo had a feeling that they were more involved than the quartermaster wanted to suggest.

“Extend the access, but they’ll retain the appointed quarters. They earned their housing upgrade.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

-

 

Rey was itchy. The decompression rashes, mottled and bruise-like outbreaks spiderwebbing across most of her skin, were itchier than any poison oak or bug bites _ever_. The constant reminders that she shouldn’t scratch at them only seemed to redouble the discomfort.

“ _Miss Kenobi, please don’t scratch at the nitrogen rash,_ ” the bracelet on her left wrist chided robotically, flashing yellow as a caution.

At first, the little bracelet was cool. It chirped an alarm and flashed green when it was time to take another dose of the mild pain killers she’d been given. It flashed yellow when it chided her to be cautious. It flashed blue when it had a new message from her doctor; it had been a surprise to wake up from her nap in the suite to the soft blue strobing and a memo that Ren had cleared them to use the pilots’ facilities. Supposedly it could be prompted to play soothing sounds. Poe said his strobed purple and shuffled through a variety of sounds, from some sort of forest-y noise to a broken clarinet to plain white noise.

After close to a day mostly bedridden, what had been other-worldly and cool _as fuck_ was now… _not_. That really seemed like a summary of this trip if she was honest. If she thought she could get away with it, Rey would chuck the white space-plastic band at the wall or down the hallway or out the airlock. Or all of them, come to think of it.

The door slid open, interrupting Rey’s destructive contemplation. It was a fight to sit up, but the excited doggy look on BB-8’s face was worth it.

“Hello, Classified,” she grunted.

_Oof,_ came the reply.

“Poe fed you earlier.”

_Woof_ , BB-8 replied, looking scandalized that she thought he was begging for food. He put his paws up on the bed and tried to hop up. His stubby legs didn’t quite reach.

“Oh, I see. Poe or Finn can’t let you up, can they?”

_Oof._

“Alright. I’ll try, but no guarantees, Classified,” she said, hauling herself upward to lean over the side of the bed and lift BB-8. She seethed as her ribs strained.

“ _Please refrain from any strenuous activity, Miss Kenobi,_ ” the bracelet chided, flashing yellow.

“Hear that, BB-8? You’re strenuous. We need to put you on a diet.”

_Woof. Rr-oof_ , BB-8 barked before trailing off into Corgish grumbles. Rey chuckled, wincing as her ribs caught, and laid back down. She settled quickly with BB-8 nestled under her arm, limbs splayed out. She fell asleep shortly after BB-8 started snoring, his doggy snuffles lulling her back to sleep.

 

-

 

Kylo could set aside his pride enough to admit that the island is beautiful, if wind-battered and terribly kriffing cold.

He’d been shuttled with a small squad of Stormtroopers to the northern Atlantic Ocean, and he couldn’t quite understand how someone could spend any time on the giant rock jutting from the water until he’d nearly reached the house on the top. He stopped to catch his breath, and looked out to see that the clouds had cleared. What was left looked like a picture book from his youth; bright blue skies that made the water below glitter like a million gems as it shifted and pulled, small seabirds breaking the blue blanket as white dots so far away.

Here, the temperature wasn’t controlled by the biosphere; it got warmer in the summers and colder in the winters. Such as it was. He couldn’t see the laser mounts or anything like that, and for a moment, he could almost imagine what growing up on this planet would be like.

“Sir?” one of the troopers prompted. Kylo turned, the mask shuffling against his neck. He began moving up the stairs again, and the troopers followed.

The man waiting at the top of the stairs was ancient-looking. His hair was white at the temples, but he’d clearly tried to keep some color in it by the mismatching golden… thing on the top of his head that flapped in the intense wind and matched the elegant vest he wore with a finely-tailored black suit and white shirt. He was tall and willowy with an age-defying grace. Was this the man he was expected to meet?

“Welcome to Skywalker Island. I am Mister Skywalker’s personal attendant, Charles. Please, come in.”

Kylo and the troopers stepped into a large main hall framed by wide, floor-to-ceiling windows across from plush leather chairs. A pair of small animals, both furry but vastly different in shape from each other wound between Charles’ feet.

“Yes, yes,” he chided. “These are Mister Skywalker’s pet dogs. Have you met one before?”

“No,” Kylo wanted to say. Instead, he sneezed in the helmet. A familiar stuffiness set into his head. He ripped at the release for the helmet, devolving into another sneezing fit. The troopers stood to attention, waiting for the command to fire. Charles looked aghast, and set about ushering the animals out of the room.

“My deepest apologies, Commodore Ren, sir!” he said emphatically. “It appears you have a pet allergy. It’s very common here on Earth. Mister Skywalker’s father was terribly allergic as well.”

“Then why do you keep them?” Kylo bit out.

“For those that aren’t allergic, dogs are a source of comfort,” Charles answered gently, which irritated Kylo immensely. They were quiet for a moment as Kylo recovered, before Charles cleared his throat.

“If it’s not too much trouble, sir,” he began, like this whole trip wasn’t already a massive inconvenience. “It would be preferable if your entourage would wait here in the main hall. Mister Skywalker, you’ll find, is no threat to your person.”

Kylo gestured to the troopers to stand down, and looked to Charles again. He seemed to squirm for a moment before pasting his smile back to his face and carrying on. It was unsettling how most Terrans seemed to smile, as if they enjoyed anger, fear, distress, and inconvenience as sport.

“Right this way, sir. Mister Skywalker should be waiting.”

The room that he was guided into looked like something _she_ would have decorated when he was young. The rooms were a deep shade of blue while the baseboards, chair rail, and crown molding were stark white. The latter was beautiful and intricate, with a sort of line work pattern that was matched on the rugs that adorned the dark hardwood floors. The large windows on the back wall let in most of the light in the room, along with a view of the sunset in a few hours, but there were canned ceiling lights and a large chandelier that weren’t powered, along with small lamps on every one of the five end tables.

The old man he was meant to be meeting stood then, from a plush black leather chair by the grand fireplace, whose mantle matched the crown molding and the rugs and whose hearth was lit with a crackling fire.

“I’m glad you could join me today. I’m Luke Skywalker,” he said, holding out his hand. Kylo looked at the hand and then back to the old man, who dropped it then.

“Charles is supposed to be bringing tea and some small sandwiches and cakes. Please, do sit. Would you like a tissue?”

“No,” Kylo replied tersely, moving to sit in the matching black chair across from Skywalker, who held up his hands and retook his own seat.

"You’re the business type, huh?” he chuckled. Kylo didn’t reply, fighting hard to keep from heaving the agitated sigh building in his chest.

“Mister Skywalker, we’re here to discuss the transfer of assets,” Kylo said after a long moment.

“Back when I was more interested in this kind of thing, people would chat. Mostly nonsense; the weather, families, movies and TV. It was nice though, to have a reprieve. I guess they don’t do that _out there_ , huh?”

“It is preferential to stay on-topic in a discussion, especially when parties have other engagements.”

“Oh, I’m keeping you up then?” Skywalker sounded affronted.

“Of course not. This is a valuable meeting,” Kylo replied, nerves were beginning to grit with his teeth. “If you’re not amenable today, we can resched—.”

“It’s interesting,” the old man interrupted. Kylo closed his mouth, seething.

“When I sent out my communique, I was contacted by a young lady who had the most charming German accent I’ve ever heard. I speak a little German, so I asked her how Belgium was this time of year. I thought, you know, that she was with the UN. And she said, ‘What’s a Belgium?’ At first, I was flabbergasted. I said, ‘You’re not with the United Nations?’ and she replied that she wasn’t from Earth.”

He paused, considering his words. Kylo wished the mask were still on so that he could roll his eyes.

“She patched me through to another man, who works for your Colonel. I swear I’ve heard lighter Bostonian accents in the South Side on St. Patrick’s Day,” he continued with a small giggle. “I asked him how the Bruins were doing, you know, conversationally. He said he didn’t know. I said, ‘Not a hockey fan?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know what either of those things are’.

“What I’m getting at is, and it took me a bit to think about it, but everybody I’ve spoken to from that ship sounds like they’re from some place I can point to on that map over there,” he said pointing to the large two-dimensional map of Earth on the wall in a golden frame.

“So, I got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, those people are descended from people who _are_ from Earth, and I decided that, as their commanding officer, you’re either some influential person’s son, or you’re another Terran’s son too,” he finished, and waited for a response. Kylo grit his teeth and tried to keep his hands from shaking. He immediately wanted to throttle this man, not just for the ridiculous play-by-play, but for taking aim at his greatest insecurity as well.

“Look, I’m just looking for information about one person,” Luke continued when Kylo didn’t reply, sitting back in his chair and suddenly looking so much older than his years. “I have a twin sister. She was supposed to inherit everything, but she decided to venture out into the stars with the _Discovery_ , and I just want to know if she made it, if she’s out there. If she’s happy. I’m, uh,” he paused, eyes glistening. “I’m not long for this world no matter what you do to it, and I’ll feel better about losing to this fucking cancer if I know Leia’s okay.”

Kylo’s stomach dropped. Surely there were other women named Leia on that ship. There had to be. It would be a cruel kriffing coincidence for it to be _her._

"Her name in the ship’s registry would be Leia Organa.”

Kylo felt like he’d been gut-punched. He was sure it showed on his face, even. Druk. He needed to leave. This broken old man was his _uncle_. He was asking Kylo about his _mo_ —about _that woman._

“Is something wrong?” the old man asked. Kylo stood quickly, whisking his helmet into one hand.

“We’ll process your request. Don’t expect much. There will be a team dispatched with any articles and the agreements within the week,” he said, making for the door.

“Does that mean you know her? What happened? Is she okay?” the old man asked, rapid fire and leaning out of his chair toward where Kylo’s path.

“There will be a team dispatched with any articles and the agreements _within the week._ Good day, Mister Skywalker,” he said, and slammed the door shut. One of the “dogs” brushed past his legs, and Kylo growled at it. The dog scampered off, but Kylo’s victory over the beast was short-lived as he started sneezing again.

“I hate this kriffing planet,” he muttered, stomping down the hallway.

 

-

 

Rey was going to go insane. She’d woken from her nap with BB-8 about two hours before feeling much better. She managed to go into the kitchen and put on water to boil. With some planning and maneuvering, she’d made herself a cup of tea and a bowl of ramen. BB-8 had sat dutifully by her feet, bared as she braced them against the stool by the counter. She’d nearly dumped him a bite when he’d pressed his cold nose to the sole of her right foot.

“Dirty trick, Classified.”

“ _Woof_.”

 

Now she was splayed out on the sofa with BB-8 warming her feet. She was stiff and sore again, and the itching hadn’t quite faded. That would have been manageable had there been something, _anything_ worth watching on TV. There wasn’t. Hallmark was running paid programming adverts, Telemundo wasn’t fun without Poe and Finn to watch it with her, and ESPN was re-running the Arizona football game from a few weeks ago, which was gross. ESPN-2 had basketball, a big rivalry game at that, but Rey wasn’t feeling it. The Science Channel wasn’t quite in reception range today either, which was majorly disappointing.

Grudgingly, she settled on the paid programming. The colorful announcer was ranting about a set of kitchen knives. Rey didn’t care, eyes fluttering closed after a few minutes of droll sales buzzwords.

Her eyes opened what felt like a few minutes later to Poe shifting her feet off the couch. BB-8 had toddled over to his food dish, munching noisily.

“How do you take up the entire couch when it’s bigger than you?” he muttered, sinking deep into the cushions as she curled her feet up closer to her body. Rey rolled her eyes and passed him the remote.

“Not much on,” she said.

Poe shrugged and tuned to the basketball game. His rashes had mostly cleared, and he was more mobile, but none of them were anywhere close to being medically cleared to return to work. Rey shuddered to think what this would’ve been like in the first room, small, cluttered, and lacking a television for most of their stay.

“Rey?” Poe called, snapping his fingers next to her ear. She whipped around to face him.

“Want food, Space Case? I was going to warm up some chicken noodle soup.”

“No thanks.”

“Turning down food? Do you need to call a doctor, ‘cause that’s a thing on the bracelet,” Poe said, pointing at his matching accessory. Rey mustered a small smile and shook her head.

“Just tired, and I had some ramen earlier,” she replied. Poe nodded in understanding.

 

As she closed her eyes once more, leaning back into the sofa cushions, Rey could almost feel like she was back in the Arctic. It was mostly the same. A carefully managed environment with air scrubbers and controls, too-cold metal floors, Poe fumbling around in the kitchen, and BB-8’s dog tags tinkling softly as he moved about. Soon enough, Finn would wake up, and he and Poe would start playing around in the kitchen, making a mess and enough noise to wake the dead. It occurred to Rey as she nodded off once more in that moment that the old saying was true: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a bit since the last post, but this chapter had some stuff going on. I can't wait to figure out how some of these pieces are going to come together. I was a little nervous about writing Luke in this chapter. Amusingly, for as much trouble as I had writing Luke, Kylo was really easy to write. Rey, though, was lots of fun despite her troubles. I love the idea of the little medical bracelets, and I think it's feasible to see a day where we might see something like them in common use. 
> 
> I've started school again. I'm supposed to be reviewing Assembly code for a microprocessor right now, but my brain finally decided on the ending for this chapter. Strike while the iron is hot and all of that. I have some words on Chapter 16 already, but I have no idea when that'll roll out.
> 
> Special Shout-Out to CaraRose, [who found this comic on Tumblr.](https://otterlyanonymous.tumblr.com/post/169946270703/carasstarwarsmusings-peachdeluxe-i-cant) I totally agree that this would happen if the circumstances allowed; in fact, it nearly did in an earlier chapter. Cara writes as well and if you're unfamiliar with her work, [you should do yourself a favor.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraRose/pseuds/CaraRose)


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